


And on your head a crown

by Sera_dy_Relandrant



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-01-21 03:38:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 64,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1536179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sera_dy_Relandrant/pseuds/Sera_dy_Relandrant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'll dress you all in yellow silk<br/>and on your head a crown.<br/>For you shall be my lady love,<br/>and I shall be your lord."</p><p>What if Olenna Tyrell was there at Bitterbridge? What if Catelyn and Brienne were never in Renly's tent? What if Olenna and Catelyn brokered another marriage after Renly's death - one between Robb and Margaery?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Three Widows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> POVs - Catelyn Stark, Margaery Baratheon, Olenna Tyrell.

_I'll dress you all in yellow silk_   
_and on your head a crown._

* * *

The stars were guttering out, like the fires by the soldiers' tents. The sky was a sheet of fading colors, bleeding lackluster into one another, moldy peaches and sallow yellows, greying streaks of navy and indigo above them.

Catelyn Stark stood, bareheaded and alone, on the bridge that had given the castle its name. Beneath the ancient stones, the Mander flowed cold and swift. Bitterbridge - ah but that had not always been its name. Nigh on three hundred years before, Wat the Hewer's men had been slain on this very bridge, ambushed by six lordly hosts. Nine thousand Poor Fellows, poor and simple men who had left their ploughshares for cracked begging bowls, armed only with brown homespun and their faith militant. The river had run red for a year and a day, so the stories said. Catelyn did not believe that. What she _did_ know was that each of those six proud lords, down to the last man one of them, had died within the year. Their deaths had been as grievous as they had been untimely.

 _No man can rend asunder what the gods have given, not without a reckoning._ Renly Baratheon, who would have gone to his brother's slaughter on the morrow, had been dead three hours.

Part of her had no other wish but to mount her horse and ride swiftly away, away from the carnage that must surely follow. Another part, the part that had been Hoster Tully's daughter before Ned Stark's wife, cautioned prudence. A king's death, even of one without a throne, was always followed by reckoning of some form or the other, whether for good or ill.

 _Knowledge is power,_ she thought, remembering what Petyr had liked to say. _And I can do more for Robb by waiting out this day than by taking tail like a scorched cat._

Her men though, she had cautioned them to be ready to ride at a moment's notice and to keep her palfrey saddled. Prudence cut two ways. They had not liked waiting a moment longer than necessary - they were northmen, of course they had not - but they had not grumbled.

A gangly squire, his livery stamped with golden roses, approached her. "Lady Stark?" he asked, bowing. "I am Alyn Ambrose. If you would please, a lady would like to speak to you. I would direct you to her apartments."

"A lady?" she asked sharply. "And which lady would that be?"

The boy, who looked to be in his early teens, was clearly uncomfortable with her question. He glanced this way and that, to make sure there was no one about, and leaning towards her, whispered a name. Catelyn's brow furrowed but after a moment, she nodded and let him escort her to the castle.

The major part of Renly's host had camped out in the fields around the castle. Even the king and his queen had bedded down in tents. Luxuriously accommodated, true, but tents all the same. But the queen's grandmother, on account of her years, had been hosted in Lord Caswell's castle. An eerie calm reigned in keep and bailey, few servingmen and maids about at this hour. On an ordinary day there would have been a small army of them around, banking up the fires, sweeping the rushes, emptying the pisspots, serving breakfast.

Catelyn felt as though she was walking into an ambush. Uneasily, she drew her furred cloak tighter about her. "Where are they all?" she asked, her voice muted to match the silence.

The Ambrose boy said, in all seriousness, "Hiding, my lady, I think. I would too if I could."

Olenna Tyrell's quarters were on the first floor, easy to reach for an old woman. Her guardsmen, stalwart six-footers, were at her door but they let her and the squire pass through without a murmur. Clearly she was expected. The antechamber was empty, the tapers worn down to putty. The fire in the main chamber was more ashes than embers and Lady Olenna sat by it, rocking herself in a wicker-chair and nursing a flute of wine.

"See to the fire, there's a good lad. And show yourself out as soon as you're done," she bade the squire peremptorily and rising, she curled a small, clawed hand around Catelyn's arm. "Come, my lady, we have much to speak of and not much time to speak it."

There was a small repast set out at a table by the window - figs, sugared almonds, bread and cheese and wine. Lady Olenna poured out the wine herself and smeared cheese on a loaf with her own knife, handing both to Catelyn with a busy air. "Sit, child," she said curtly and Catelyn would have been amused, if she were not so tense. She had not been called a child for many years, not since she had last been at Riverrun - and that had been almost fifteen years ago. _Robb was nursing at my breast then._ "You look as though you could eat a bull, madam. My bread's not poisoned, nor my wine, so eat up."

Catelyn took a cautious sip of the wine. Arbor gold, the sweetness melting on her tongue like honey from the meadows. Drawn no doubt from Olenna Tyrell's own casks - only the best would do for _her_.

"So," Lady Olenna said, without preamble, "The boy playing king is dead and my queenly granddaughter is a widow, just as you are and just as I am." She grimaced. "Widowhood sits poorly with you, Lady Stark, but it would sit even worse with a girl of my granddaughter's tender years. Margaery and Loras might weep for fair Renly but their father will weep for her crown. Stannis Baratheon has a queen and so will Joffrey, the moment your daughter flowers." Lady Olenna pinned her in place with a piercing eye. "Your son though, I hear he is unattached."

"You have heard wrongly then," Catelyn said calmly. "He is betrothed to Lord Frey's daughter."

"Oh? Which one?"

"The one he chooses," Catelyn said. "It was the price we paid to cross the Twins."

Olenna snorted. "My lady, with all due respect, you would make a very poor fishwife if the gods ever called you to it. Have you ever bargained? No, don't wrinkle your dainty nose at me, a thousand years ago your Tully grandfathers were fishermen on the river."

 _Just as you Tyrells were stewards and peasants. And the Redwynes were, and still are, wine-mercers._ Catelyn let the unspoken words curdle between them but she held her peace.

"A king for a crossing. The richest toll that the weasel will ever collect. Walder Frey will not hold you to it, I am sure - not if we can come to other, more suitable arrangements. A queen for a king." Her lips curved into a smile and briskly, without giving Catelyn time to think, she added, "But surely you would want to see the grieving widow for yourself?"

"No, that will not be necessary," Catelyn said, with an air of feigned coolness. It did not deceive the Queen of Thorns she was sure. Her mind was racing with the sudden ramifications of Olenna's offer. "I am sure your granddaughter is distraught."

"She's asleep," Olenna snorted. "She's a healthy girl, my Margaery, eats and sleeps like clockwork. She's your son's age too, down to a few months - born while her father was laying siege to Stannis' castle. Pretty, if I do say so myself, a good pair of birthing hips. A maiden too, as Stannis bellowed for all the world to hear yesterday. And her dowry is generous - ten thousand spears and the gold of Highgarden against a crown for a Tyrell girl."

"A poor crown measured to the one she wore before," Catelyn said, measuring Olenna, "My son is only King in the North and as a southroner must know, the North is rock and ice and barrenness."

"My good woman, what else are you his mother for but to guide him?" Olenna said with a shade of impatience. "My own son is greying, with grown sons of his own, but he knows when to listen to his mam. _Yours_ is scarcely out of tailclouts."

"I had no wish for war." Catelyn looked away. "Not even to avenge Ned, though I loved him dearly. War only brings bitterness. My son only wants what is his, he has no wish to reach for a hollow crown that will never bring him happiness."

Olenna said nothing, letting the moment drag out. Finally she said, her voice like flint, "Within the hour, Renly's levies will melt away like summer snow. Some back to their own lands with their tails between their legs. A handful, those whose lands skirt the Crownlands, will clamber to swear their fealty to Joffrey. But the greater part will turn to Stannis. Loras and Margaery and I are bound for Highgarden. No doubt my son will offer Margaery to Joffrey, if he will have her. Two kings will benefit from this day's bloody business and neither will be your son. Robb Stark will be crushed between them like grain between the mortar and pestle.

Renly might have been content to leave him be but Joffrey and Stannis will not, you can be sure of _that_. Once they have offed each other, the victor will turn to your son and swat him like a troublesome gnat. Your girls in King's Landing will be dead by then - who would suffer a traitor's discarded daughters to live? Your boys in the north will be your consolation - _if_ they are not taken away from you as hostages and _if_ they are not slaughtered before they come to manhood. Sons of a traitor, brothers of a traitor - best nip the wolves while they're still pups, eh? But of course that will all be of your choosing, my lady. May it bring you much joy."

A girl was coming down the stairs. In her white gown, with her hair loose and without her crown Margaery Tyrell looked like the girl she was. Only fifteen. She wore a grave expression and seeing Catelyn, sank into a curtsey. "Lady Stark," she said, without a flicker of hesitation, "I am pleased to see you. I apologize for my state of dress. May I offer you something else to drink if you prefer? Hippocrass, summerwine..."

Catelyn tried to compare her with the cowed and sullen girls she had seen in Walder Frey's hall and could not.

"Lady Stark was just leaving," Olenna said curtly, "Go back to bed, girl, you'll have botheration enough soon."

Catelyn took a sip of the wine. "No, my lady. I think I will stay."

Lady Olenna's thin brows rose by a fraction. "Margaery, my love," she said over her shoulder, "be so good as to summon your brother and Lord Tarly for me. Oh, and ink and paper and a maester. And put on the darkest gown you have and sit with us once you're done - you must make up for the brevity of your widowhood with the blackest mourning you have."

* * *

_"We shall have another wedding soon, wait and see. Margaery will marry Tommen. She'll keep her queenly crown and her maidenhead, neither of which she especially wants, but what does that matter? The great western alliance will be preserved … for a time, at least."_

* * *

The noontime sun blazed white-hot on the castle roof, cooking her in her heavy widow's weeds just as it would a man in armor. Sweat soaked her armpits and crawled down her face and back in salty tendrils. She licked her cracked lips and shading her eyes with a hand, looked down at the flat plains.

The keep was not tall, but the low land around it made it seem taller. From here she could see the Mander, bright as a mirror, where it met the Roseroad. Already, as her grandmother had predicted, Renly's armies had begun to trickle away. _And the trickle will rise to a flood if we do not make our own arrangements._ They had been lucky in that only the Stormlords had begun to leave, and few of them at that. Not many were bound by loyalty to Stannis, fewer still by love as they had been to Renly. Most, more cunning and cautious, would wait the day out, circling like buzzards over carrion for what pickings they could claim before fleeing.

Lord Tarly held the men of the Reach, her father's men. He had knelt to her grandmother, as though she were a queen herself, and sworn that while there was breath in his body he would hold his lord's levies in his absence. Her grandmother had thanked him graciously and made Margaery, suitably clad as befitted a young widow, do the same. All through the long hours of that morning she had sat, wedged between her grandmother and Lady Stark, and tried to be attentive, as was expected of her, while armed men flitted through their apartments.

But she could not and at the end it had been Lady Stark who sensed her distress and sent her to take the air. Grandmother had not been best pleased, she would have expected her to deflect the suggestion - _a queen's place is in the council chamber, Margaery, not the nursery or the bedroom -_ but she had gladly accepted the excuse to flee. The roof, seldom visited, was her refuge and she took a savage joy in melting under the sun till her face and gown were nowhere near presentable.

"I loved him," she told the heat-hazed air and it was the truth, though her grandmother would be disappointed to hear. How often had she told her that love for a man or a babe at the breast was a futile, joyless endeavor? There was only one love that could stand the test of time and that was love for gold or love for a crown. "I loved him since I was _eight_."

How could she not love Renly Baratheon? The first time her father had hosted him at Highgarden, he had come to take Loras, nearly ten then, to be fostered in his household as a squire. He had been in his late teens then, as strange and lovely as a mirage. He had sung of Serwyn the Mirror Knight to her and plucked peaches for her from the orchard, with his own hands. He was Lord of the Stormlands, had been since he was Loras' age, and that night, at bedtime, her mother had told her of the white marble castle, twined with ivy and roses and set by the sea, that he ruled.

Her mother had always wanted her to marry Renly. Her father had other plans though - the Lannister queen was old and despised, her sons little-loved. She had not borne a child for seven years. And Margaery looked like Lyanna Stark, or so her father was deluded enough to believe...

And now they would marry her to another king. A fearsome northern boy who rode with a man-slaying direwolf, the son of a cold-eyed, brusque woman whom her grandmother privately called a proud fool. _And when he is dead, they will marry me to another king,_ she thought. She had wept out all her tears in her bedroom, when her grandmother had bidden her sleep. She had been listening in when Lady Stark had met her grandmother, as she had been instructed, and arrived on cue at the perfect moment.

 _How could any mother resist you for her son, sweetling? When she begins to balk, you will sweep in._ her grandmother had said, patting her cheek. _You will wear white and leave your hair loose, like a maid on her wedding day. Dry those eyes now, suck a sweet and look the part of the bereaved widow. But not too bereaved. Don't fret. He's your age, he's a charming boy I'm sure. You'll be a happy bride again. Soon._

But she wouldn't. Renly had been her love, though he would never have loved her as she wanted him to. Sometimes she had hated Loras for stealing him away from her, for never giving him a chance with her. _No,_ she thought, feeling guilty, remembering the hollow blank of Loras' face, the way he had shed no tears even when she had folded him in her arms and begged him to cry with her. _No, I would never want to love Renly as much as he did. Not Renly, not anyone. Love is poison, just like grandmother said._

Her golden crown, with the roses twining round the antlers, had been packed away in a coffer - to be melted down in time. Her wedding ring and signet band, with Renly's seal, had been locked away too. But her grandmother had not seen her slip her troth ring out of the chest. It was a plain band of rose-gold, slipped on her finger only a few months ago, in her mother's solar at Highgarden. Loras had been the first to kiss her afterwards, no bitterness in his face, only joy for his sister and his lover. It was a little loose for her finger and only later had she figured out that it had originally been Loras', gifted by Renly himself on the day he had won his knighthood.

 _Ever thine, ever mine,_ it said. If Loras ever asked her what had happened to it, she would tell him to ask their grandmother. He wouldn't dare.

The day was hot but she felt cold all over. Sliding the band over her finger she gathered all the force in her arm and flung it over the battlements. For a moment it winked in the sunlight, as bright as her girlish dreams, and then it was gone forever.

* * *

 

> _Like barley bending and rising again, _  
> _So would I, unbroken, rise from pain._

* * *

Stars studded the darkness and whispers, like strings of little wildfires, raced through the camp. A fair-haired maid, her advances spurned by Lord Renly, had slain the king with a poisoned cup of wine. The king had choked while eating the self-same peach he had mocked his brother with, that very morning. The Lannister queen had sent a Faceless Man to dispatch of him. His brother's sorceress had summoned a shadow to throttle the life-force from him, while he prayed alone in his pavilion.

"Which story should we spread, m'lady?" a drab little man in boiled leather and homespun asked her. A peacock of a singer stood next to him, in gaily-dyed but patched robes, strumming a lyre lightly.

"The last," Olenna said. "Cersei Lannister is leagues away but Stannis Baratheon is _here_. She will never win the Stormlords to her cause easily and besides, they say that she lay with her brother to bear her children. Stannis however... the gods will not stand a man who would kill his own brother. Make sure you point that out. Quote from the Seven Pointed Star if you must." _As Renly would have killed his brother on the morrow, but no one will remember that._

"Just as you say, m'lady," the men said in unison.

 _Good thing I insisted on coming to_ _Bitterbridge_. Mace and Alerie had tried to cozen her out of it, relentless in their inveighing. It was too far, she was too old, it was too dangerous, who would give her the care and attention she required? _I've never seen a battle with my own eyes though I've lived through too many._ Catelyn Stark was writing to her son, Margaery to her mother. Within the hour, the ravens would go west and south with their letters and within the hour, she hoped to bring Loras back to his senses.

"Come," she told Arryk - or is it Erryk? Dear, dear, she never _could_ remember - briskly. "No good in waiting, what's done must be done." Pinning her cloak with her emerald brooch, she let the guardsman hoist her up in the saddle. They were riding for the village hard by the castle. While Bitterbridge was shrouded in a silence as deep as that in a fairy story, the camp was writhing with tension and whispers. The air was thick as lard, waiting to be cut through with a sword or a scream.

_And so it begins again._

In the sept at Highgarden, the walls were stained glass, colored sunlight streaming through them and fracturing into a thousand patterns on polished oak in the daytime. In the village sept, the seven walls were crooked and cracked, spotted with lichen. In the sept at Highgarden, the gods were gold and silver, their ivory altars winking with fragrant candles. In the village sept, the gods were faces drawn on the walls in chalk, with nothing of grace or beauty to recommend them.

Of all her grandchildren, Olenna reflected, she was the least close to Loras. Willas and Margaery had been reared under her eye, Garlan fostered close by at Cider Hall by with the Fossoways, with her Janna to look after him. But ever since he was ten, Loras had lived in the Stormlands, seeing his family only once a year - if that. _Renly was his lover, his brother, his father, all together, by then._

Loras has brought a candle of his own, to set beneath the Stranger's face. She found him kneeling in the dirt - Alerie's proud, pretty boy who would have a thousand blooming forget-me-nots sewn into the velvet nap of his cloak for tourneys. She dropped the hood of her cloak and said quietly, "You should have stayed in the castle. They have a sept there too." Her heart ached for her grandson, but her voice was measured and even.

"I can take care of myself, lady grandmother," Loras said coldly, patting the sword at his side.

"I do not doubt that, so you needn't be waving that big stick of yours at me." It was too dark to make out, but she had no doubt that he was glowering at her. Young men were all alike - unless it had a tight cunny, or in Loras' case, a cock, they had no time for it.

"Have you come to spy on me?" he gritted out.

"Hardly," she said, "you're not a prince to be guarded or a pup to be watched - or are you? No, I came to make my own peace with the gods as any old woman might." And to demonstrate, she set her own beeswax taper, as thick as a man's forearm, before the Warrior. Taking out her embroidered prayer cushion from her bag, to save her gown from the dirt, she knelt and gabbled her prayers in her head. Daughters and wives prayed to the Mother and the Maiden, old widows to the Crone but from her childhood, Olenna had always prayed to the Warrior for strength to smite down her enemies.

 _Bless me, there was never any shortage of_ those. She had been eleven when her father had tried to barter her off to a Targaryen princeling, a soft-headed, mewling nephew of Aegon the Unlikely's. They had hoped to breed him on a fertile Redwyne girl for though his wits were too weak for any earthly doings, he could at least sire sons to strengthen the royal bloodline or daughters to breed back into it. She had needed all her wit and conviction to work her way out of _that_ tangle. Margaery didn't know half how lucky she was, her mother might be an empty-headed fool but at least she had a grandmother to care about her.

_You might not think much of Catelyn Tully's boy, my girl, but you'd rather have him than some of the monsters that were offered to me._

It had been a stroke of luck that Luthor Tyrell had fallen in lust with her, her sister, who would have been Luthor's bride, spitefully said. What she did not know was that it had not been luck at all, only Olenna herself. _Oh I was good, I was very good._

Finishing her prayers to her own satisfaction, Olenna rose and settled her cushion neatly inside her bag. "Would you care to walk with your grandmother, Loras?" she asked, with a quaver in her voice. To her surprise, the boy rose without a murmur - she had expected a fight of some sort, but then the idea of being alone in the dark little sept with only his thoughts for comfort was too daunting even for him.

She took the boy's arm and they walked out a little ways from the horses and the groomsmen, on the still, dark moor. He was sixteen years old, the most beautiful of Mace and Alerie's children, and he towered over her like a giant.

"I remember your birth as though it was only yesterday," she said softly, "It was the Year of the False Spring, the year that Rhaegar Targaryen crowned the Stark girl at Harrenhal. I dabbed salt and honey on your toothless gums myself, so that you would know only the sweet things in life thereafter. I brought you to your mother. She was fit to burst with joy - three sons in a row. Her mother had borne only one and so had I - what a triumph for her. Garlan, bless his little heart, was more interested in the new blocks your father promised him but Willas adored you. He was big enough to understand then, he loved to rock you when we let him. Such a gentle little boy he was, still is, - but of course Margaery was his pet."

"I grieve for you, my darling love," she said, reaching up to stroke his face with soft, worn fingers. "I never had anyone to love before you children - I was too hard. Cold as a crypt, my own sister said of me. I never loved my girls that well, I was always too hard on them though they were good daughters to me and craved for my love. As for your father - well he's an oaf and it's a weary business loving him, just as it was loving Luthor. I cannot tell you what it feels like to lose someone you loved, because I never have, not yet. With luck, I will survive you four. That is what I pray for - that I will survive my grandchildren."

"You will, grandmother." He squeezed her fingers, relenting somewhat.

"Will I?" Olenna smiled crookedly. "Aerys Targaryen did not. He lost them in the war and there is another war brewing over us now. Catelyn Stark says that she does not want vengeance for her Ned, but those are the words of a fool or a liar. Your sister is still a child, she does not want another crown or another husband though Robb Stark is as good as anyone. And you, Loras? What do you want, now that Renly is dead?"

"Vengeance," the boy said, his hands brushing his sword-hilt. "Stannis' head."

"You will have both," she promised him, "as soon your sister has a crown."

* * *


	2. The Three Warriors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> POVs - Randyll Tarly, Margaery Tyrell, Robb Stark, Catelyn Stark.

_"Did you ever think to ask yourself why we remained in the west so long_ _after Oxcross? You knew I did not have enough men to threaten Lannisport or Casterly Rock."_

_"Why... there were other castles... gold, cattle... "_

_"You think we stayed for plunder?" Robb was incredulous. "Uncle, I wanted Lord Tywin to come west."_

_"We were all horsed," Ser Brynden said. "The Lannister host was mainly foot. We planned to run Lord Tywin a merry chase up and down the_ _coast, then slip behind him to take up a strong defensive position athwart the gold road, at a place my scouts had found where the ground would_ _have been greatly in our favor. If he had come at us there, he would have paid a grievous price. But if he did not attack, he would have been trapped_ _in the west, a thousand leagues from where he needed to be. Al the while we would have lived off his land, instead of him living off ours."_

 _"Lord Stannis was about to fall upon King's Landing," Robb said. "He might have rid us of Joffrey, the queen, and the Imp in one red stroke. Then_ _we might have been able to make a peace."_

* * *

_The Young Wolf was paying the Lannisters back in kind for the devastation they'd inflicted on the riverlands._

* * *

Dickon at his side, Randyll Tarly made for the Caswells' timber hall to break his fast in the morning. Out of the sea of men in boiled leather and wool, there were two women his eye lit upon, seated together at the high table. The first was Mace Tyrell's girl, in deepest mourning. Randyll Tarly approved of her - if there was ever a girl fit to wear a crown, it was her. She had grace and charm and gravity for all her youth, not like his own silly, giggling girls - but then he would have expected nothing less of Olenna Redwyne's granddaughter. The other girl though... he frowned. She had put away her cloak of lapis blue for drabber garb, he saw, and her face was bone-weary. Lady Margaery ate heartily enough but Lady Brienne only picked at her food.

"Lord Tarly," Lady Margaery said, spying him. She waved him over. "Dickon," she said with a smile and ruffled the lad's hair. "Have you broken your fast yet, my lord?"

"Not yet but I will now, my lady."

"Then you must sit with me," she insisted. With a snap of her fingers, a servingman made his way to the table and in short order, he found himself face to face with fine, white bread, melted cheese, a bowl of strawberries and cream and Olenna Tyrell's own mead. Dickon scuttled off to the pages' table. His mother had not wanted him to be brought to war - _he is too young,_ she had wept, _only ten. Please Randyll, let me keep him for a little longer_ \- but she had a woman's soft heart. He had told her that a boy, a heir, was never too young to see battle and bloodshed. For his part, Dickon was holding himself up well, never squeamish like Sam. Randyll was proud of him.

"You have slept well, I hope?" Lady Margaery asked solicitously.

"Hardly a wink, my lady," Randyll said, digging into his food. "I've been up all night, planning."

"I thank you on my lord father's behalf and my own," she said, "no man could be more true or loyal, my lord. Your services shall not go unrewarded." _When I am Queen_ , she did not add but then she didn't need to. "Are we to ride up the Roseroad to Harrenhal as I hear?"

"Perhaps," Randyll said cautiously. Lady Olenna was grooming the girl but she was still only fifteen. Young girls were prone to carrying tales, as fickle and feather-headed as little birds.

"Lord Tywin is still at Harrenhal," she pointed out, "harrying the Riverlands. It would be a fitting troth gift were we to present such a plum to Robb Stark."

"Harrenhal will never be a plum, so sweet and easy for the picking," Randyll grunted, "rather say a hard nut, with meat for the taking within if you crack it. _If_ , my lady. Not when. And Robb Stark is in the Westerlands now, at any rate, so we have heard."

Lady Brienne rose, having finished. She was scarce out of earshot before Randyll, unable to control himself, burst out, "The Lady Brienne's company is not fit for such as you, my lady. If I were you I would take care to stay as far as I could from her. Bad influence."

Lady Margaery veiled her eyes with her lashes. "I am sure I will take your good advice to heart, my lord," she murmured, "I know you speak as you find and what you say comes from the heart."

"Yes, my lady," he said, pleased that she had come round to his view and so quickly. "I'm a bluff, blunt man if I do say so myself."

"Dickon's a fine boy," she said, skirting around the issue of Lady Brienne. "I saw him sparring with the other pages a few days back. He was getting the better of them, though he's not the biggest of the lot. But what about your other son, my lord? Samwell? We heard that he joined the Night's Watch."

"Yes," Randyll said, his face turning red with embarrassment in spite of himself. "My Sam was always a dreamer. Dreamed of honor with the Black Knights, did what he thought was his duty. We could hardly bear to let him go but he was not to be stopped. Dickon is our consolation and in time, my lady and I hope to have more sons. We are still young enough to do our duty by the marriage bed."

"Yes," Lady Margaery said so sweetly he could not be sure whether she was mocking him or not, "a valiant and virtuous young man, to be sure. There are not many of his ilk these days." He was sure some part of the story about Sam had leaked out one way or another - no one who knew him could believe the pretentious story they had concocted about his sudden decision to join the cut-throats and rapers on the Wall.

He was spared the need to reply by Lady Olenna's arrival. "Finished yet, my lord?" she asked briskly. He was not quite but he leaped up, ready to do her bidding, anyway. Lady Margaery began to rise but her grandmother said curtly, "Not you. Run off and sit with Lady Caswell and her women, that's a good girl. Sew or read, you're not needed now." And taking his arm, Lady Olenna bustled away while behind their backs, Margaery grimaced.

He had always admired Lady Tyrell, from the first time he had seen her. He had been a lad of Dickon's years then, come with his father to pay tribute to Highgarden. For years he had lived under her roof, as page and squire, knighted in his late teens by Lord Luthor Tyrell himself. He had seen the cool efficiency with which Lady Tyrell ruled her vast domains - nobody who knew Luthor Tyrell could imagine him ruling anything greater than a horse or at most, a kennel of hunting dogs -, her grace under pressure, her almost mannish competence. She was like no woman he had seen, before or after. He had dreamed of her, as boys did of their liege lords' buxom wives, but more than that he had worshiped her.

Melessa Florent, his bride, had been a hard disappointment to come down to. He could never dream of rising high enough to take one of the Tyrell girls to wife, but Melessa was a disaster. She was timid and scared and as thick-witted as a pullet. She had a pretty face but that faded quickly, like her figure worn out after years of childbearing. Her voice never rose higher than a whisper. And she had given him Sam and a passel of worthless girls. Dickon was the only thing he could forgive her for.

They made their way to Renly's pavilion. The largest and most luxurious of all the tents pitched, it would serve as their council chamber while they decided their next move. Lady Olenna spoke to him. "We are in your debt, Randyll," she said gravely, "Loras is still a boy and I am but a woman. Without you we would never have been able to hold the Stormlords or Mace's vassals - you are the mortar that keeps them fast."

"A wise woman, Lady Tyrell," he said chivalrously.

"A woman still." She gave him a wan smile. "You have three girls. One of them might do nicely for my good-brother Moryn's son, Leo, don't you think?"

"Perhaps," he said cautiously. Mayhap the youngest one. "It is too soon to speak of, as yet." He would wait until there were riper plums for the picking - for all his fondness for Lady Olenna, he was no fool. The Tyrells would be in his debt for now. A younger son from a cadet branch would do well enough for one of the girls but he had a special match in mind for Dickon. The Bulwer lands had no lord and their heiress Alysanne was one of Olenna's wards and of Dickons's years. _She would do very nicely._

"The last we heard Robb Stark was marching west with the Blackfish," Lady Olenna said, "and why should he do that, Randyll?"

She knew the answer well enough he was sure but he gave it to her anyway. "He dispersed the riverlords to reclaim their own lands but he dared not tarry at Riverrun. The longer he waits, the longer he gives his enemies time to gather their forces against him and the more restless his own lords will be, without a battle to be fought."

"What do we know of his numbers?" she demanded, getting to the heart of the matter.

That was the tricky part, where they must needs venture into the realm of speculation. Lady Stark had been of some help in the matter but she was close-mouthed and kept her own counsel, rightly so. "He left his foot-soldiers and infantry with Bolton of the Dreadfort," Randyll said, beginning with what they knew to be true. "He marched south from Winterfell with not quite twenty thousand men. Lord Frey gave him four thousand men for him. Near all his mounted men he took west with him - seven thousand, eight thousand if I hazard rightly. Never more than ten. The Blackfish commands his scouts and outriders."

"And the foot?"

"East to Harrenhal under Bolton, as Lady Stark gives us to understand." Randyll snorted. "The numbers are scarce on his side."

"And why _west_?" she persisted. "Why not east or south or any flavoring of all three?"

"I think," Randyll said cautiously, "that he has his sights on Casterly Rock - what a prize that would be if he could capture it. A seasoned commander would have cautioned against such a bold move but we must remember that Robb Stark is still a green youngling. How old is he? Fourteen? Fifteen?"

"Perhaps," Lady Olenna said doubtfully. "I think he means to set the Westerlands afire, just as Tywin Lannister's hell-hounds did to the Riverlands. Eye for an eye - those are his mother's lands. Or mayhap he means to settle for a greater prize - Lord Tywin himself."

Randyll dared to voice his doubt. "My lady, do you truly think this new alliance is wise? The Stark boy is just that - a boy for all that he calls himself king. He might be lying dead with a gold-feathered quarrel in his gut, as we speak."

"Then we must ask the gods to preserve him," Lady Olenna said piously. "We tied ourselves to a fool before and came out in fine fettle. And I rather prefer my own theory to yours."

The lords were waiting for them in Renly's pavilion. Lady Stark stood alone, proud and indifferent to the murmurs that rose and fell around her. Only the most valued of the lords and commanders of the Reach were present at the gathering - Fossoway, Lady Oakheart, Redwyne and a handful of others. But the Stormlords who had not scattered for Stannis' side were present in vast numbers, crammed up against each other like sardines. The bannermen of the Reach would hold their tongue, they feared Randyll enough, but no power on earth could keep the unruly Stormlanders from giving tongue like an alley of cats.

They began to clamor at once but Lady Olenna, with magnificent grace, made her way to Renly's throne. Hopping on to it, she folded her hands on the table before her and said, in a voice that carried, "Shall we begin then, my lords and ladies?"

Randyll sat to her right, Lady Stark to her left. The rest made a dash for the closest seats they could find. _No dignity at all,_ Randyll thought with contempt. Lady Olenna gave him a tiny smile as though she could read his thoughts. Once they were all seated, Randyll lifted his hand for silence and let Lady Olenna speak.

"The situation lies thus," she said, without preamble, "my son, is amassing another host in Highgarden. King Robb-" Once again the voices rose. King Robb. Not Lord Stark, but King. "King Robb," Lady Olenna continued smoothly as though there had been no interruption, "makes his way to the west with the northmen, his true intentions unknown to us. Tywin Lannister sits growing fat at Harrenhal, his dogs bleeding the Riverlands. Hoster Tully is dying, no offense to you, Lady Stark, and his bannermen have dispersed to their own lands. The Imp rules in King's Landing. Stannis has left with some of our deserters - good riddance to the lot of them -, whether to Dragonstone or King's Landing or the Stormlands we cannot say as yet."

She paused a moment to let all this sink in. "On a happier note, Lady Stark has consented to the betrothal of my beloved granddaughter, Lady Margaery, with His Grace, her son. Now, my lords and ladies, now that you have heard all there is to hear, what do you propose that we do?"

The voices washed over them like hailstones. Lady Tyrell sat back with a smile, nodding to Randyll to begin listening and rejecting. If it had been Mace Tyrell, he would have thrown in his voice too, with a bellow like a bull. Some were for marching for King's Landing at once - they had the numbers and the strength, their armies grown fat on the land.

"The gods smile on those with the greater numbers!" an overwrought Ashford announced.

"Tell that to the Dornish who routed the Young Dragon," Lady Olenna murmured.

A woman and a dwarf ruled the city for a boy, armed with only paid goldcloaks. Easy pickings. Randyll was greatly tempted by the idea too but he had an inkling that that was where Stannis was headed as well - and it would do them no good should they meet _him_ before they ever reached King's Landing. Some suggested sending outriders and scouts to the Riverlands, to send the Lannisters racing before them, whilst keeping the greater part of the army quartered safely, but that was a coward's idea. The Westerlands, some insisted, to show Tywin Lannister that Lannisters were not the only ones to pay their debts.

Lady Tyrell only listened and under the cover of the general cacophony, turned to Lady Stark. "Amends must be made to the Freys of the Crossing now," she said in a low voice. "If we can get your daughters back, the younger one will still do for Lord Walder's youngest boy. As for the spurned flower of Frey, I think your brother should do nicely. Lord Walder has had his eye on Edmure Tully ever since Lady Minisa put him in the cradle."

"A paltry lord in place of a king he was promised," Lady Stark said dryly. "No my lady, that is too mean a price. I feel that for our own safety, and in true honor's name, the deal must be sweetened. My brother for one daughter, your grandson for another."

"Loras?"

"No. Willas. Lord Frey will construe anything less as an insult."

Lady Tyrell stroked her garnet beads. "We will speak of this later."

"We will. But soon."

The voices made little difference to Lady Olenna - she had already made up her mind. The only thing that remained was to let the lords talk it out between them, so that they might have the pleasure of airing their own opinions and the peace of mind of assuming that they had some say in the matter. "Yes, Ser Lyulph," she said to the Knight of the Gorse Moor, one of Renly's bannermen, "I think that a meritable suggestion indeed. What say you, lords and ladies, of bearding the lion in his den?"

"Harrenhal." Lady Stark's fingers shaped themselves unconsciously into the sign of the Seven Pointed Star. A child of the Riverlands she would have heard the grisliest stories of Black Harren's castle. Randyll could hardly blame her, Harrenhal was a name to send shivers down any right-thinking man's spine. And as to laying siege to that castle and Lord Tywin Lannister within it...

"Let Stannis the traitor and brother-killer bleed King's Landing or scuttle back to the Stormlands as he chooses," Lady Olenna said, her voice ringing, "my son routed him once before and he will do it again, if need be. The gods will never side with a man who beds a demon sorceress, who killed his own brother for a crown that was never his. Before we let our armies melt away, we will march to Harrenhal and slay the father of the Kingslayer and the monstrous whore who bedded him to bear her tainted bastards. And to King Robb's aid we will send men of our own. Let the Lannisters know what it is like to see their lands burn and their smallfolk bleed."

She rose, small and indomitable, her voice like iron. "We will break for a candle's notch. And then we will draw up our plans."

* * *

_And her hair was a folded flower  
And the quiet of love in her feet._

* * *

She had not tottered off to Lady Caswell's solar, to sew with her pack of hens. Instead, she had gone looking for Brienne of Tarth. Whether out of a perverse desire to spite that tiresome Tarly oaf or for pity for the poor girl, she could not say.

Keep and stables proved futile, but she found her at last on the bridge. Brienne, the Evenstar's daughter, was a tall, strapping woman but today, she looked small and defeated. She was leaning over the bridge, hunched up as though contemplating throwing herself off, looking across to the meadow where she had unhorsed Loras in the last tourney.

Margaery slipped up next to her, waiting a while so as not to startle her. Finally she said, "The Mander is a beautiful color today, is it not? So like your eyes. Sapphires from Tarth, my lord once said of your eyes."

"So His Grace was once kind enough to say," Brienne said, her voice quiet and contained. "His Grace said kind things of everyone."

"He spoke only the truth about your eyes," Margaery said sincerely. "What did you do with your cloak, Lady Brienne?"

She half expected Brienne to say that she had burned it, but the girl only said, "I have packed it, my lady. I intend to leave soon."

"For Tarth?"

"Yes. What else is left here for me? My father was grieved when I left to join the levies, he will be joyed to see me come back. He is old and lonely, I might be a worthless daughter but I am all he has left." She bowed her head. "I came only to serve His Grace. He is dead now, I failed him."

"You didn't," Margaery insisted, "no one knows what killed him. He was alone, his guards outside his pavilion." _He was waiting for Loras to join him._

"I was too escort Lady Stark to him later in the night. If I had only arrived earlier... if I had been there..." Brienne curled her large, mannish hands into fists and slammed them futilely against the stones. Margaery thought of Loras' hands, bruised and battered from striking the walls. She had salved them and bound gauze around them and though grandmother had raised her eyes, she had said nothing. _What must it be to pour all your love into one person? What must it be, not to be loved by anyone because you are so strange and awkward and people laugh at you?_

She had never known. She had only had kindness and beauty in her life.

"I have something for you," she said. The ring she had flung from the battlements had fallen straight before a Tyrell guardsman. Instead of pocketing it, the loyal man had brought it straight back to her. She had paid him generously for it but had then been at a loss as to what to do. She had thought of returning it to Loras but now she had another idea. "This was Renly's," she said, taking out the ring and putting it in Brienne's palm.

"My lady," Brienne said blankly, shaking her head and refusing to take it. "I never could. It is yours."

"Keep it as a talisman, for our sake," she said, "it would only bring me grief to look at it and remind me of all that has gone before. But it will remind you that though he is not with us, he is never dead while there is still someone left to think of him. I will be married again, my thoughts, my duty must be for my husband and the children I bear him, but you may keep him alive yet in your heart." She curled Brienne's fingers around it and whispered, "Please."

"It is too small for my fingers," Brienne said sheepishly. She held up her large, square hands. They were hard and callused against Margaery's soft white ones.

"Wear it around your neck then," Margaery suggested. "I will give you the chain myself if you have none."

Brienne bowed, Margaery had never seen her curtsey to anyone though she doubted whether it was possible to curtsey in breeches. She had never seen Brienne in a gown either. "My lady," Brienne said shyly, "if you will permit me, I would like to stay with you and serve you. You might have no use for me as a lady-in-waiting, to sit with you in the solar, but I can attend you as a guardsman. Your honor shall be mine. I will fetch and carry for you if you need a page, I will serve you with my sword and shield if you need a knight."

"That is generous of you," Margaery said.

Brienne shook her head stubbornly. "Not generous, my lady. Only just. I failed His Grace, may the Mother be gentle with his passage, but I will not fail you, my lady. I swear it on this ring."

"Then, Brienne of Tarth," Margaery said gravely, "I shall be very glad to take you into my service." And in her heart she thought, _and you will be loyal to only me. Not my grandmother, not my father or my brothers. Only me._

* * *

_My heart is a wolf ruled by two moons;_   
_one which beckons me back into the night,_   
_the other is calling me home._

* * *

"Me mam told me the Westerlands were all gold, from coast to coast. Blood poppies and yellow-haired wenches in silks so thin you could see right through them." There was wistfulness in the boy's voice.

 _Boy,_ thought Robb, half-listening to him, half-amused by his own temerity. _His voice has broken and he is older than me. He is no boy._

"So thin you could see right through to their tits and navels and the gold between their legs," another said in a bawdier voice and began to hum the opening bars of _The Red-Pelted Wench._ They rode through the woods under cover of twilight, voices hushed, weapons at the ready, more like bandits than a king's army. They were three days ride from Lannisport.

A tall woman on a dappled palfrey made her way to Robb's side. "What news, Dacey?" he asked her.

She pushed back the deep hood of her cloak. Beneath it she wore leathers and ringmail though a man might have thought her gowned. Only a woman, a weak vessel. "No sentries," she said gravely, "This Stafford Lannister is a fool. He thinks himself snug in his own lands."

"None at all?" he asked incredulously.

She shrugged. "A handful. We picked them off easily."

"Is my uncle well?" Brynden Tully had gone with the scouts himself to see how the land lay.

"Yes," she said. "Quenching his thirst now. He will join you when he is ready." As an afterthought she added, "The village is called Oxcross. By your leave Your Grace, I must get myself my own horse." Nodding to him, she made her way down the line, to leave her cumbersome cloak with the supply wains and mount her war-horse.

They halted a short while thereafter. "We wait till dark," Robb informed them. _And till Grey Wind comes._ They obeyed without a murmur. His men. King's men. They had all sworn that they would lay down their lives for him. His hands tense on the saddle-reins Robb looked them over, clustered in their smaller groups. The boy who had thought the Westerlands were all gold. His face was chalk-white, the freckles on his nose and cheeks standing out like spatters of blood. He could not be more than seventeen.

 _Is that what my mother sees when she looks at me, armed for war? A child?_ _  
_

Within the hour he could be dead, his head rotting on a spike as they marched it to Tywin Lannister, his men left for the crows to pick at in the morning. And his mother would not know, not for days... _Jon,_ he thought miserably, _Jon I wish you were here now. Then I would not be so alone.  
_

Once his battles were won, he would go to the Wall. He would beg Jon to return. So what if he was a Black Brother now? Rules could be changed. The Lannister queen had proved that well enough when she had torn the white cloak from good Ser Barristan's shoulders. He needed his brother by his side.

He sensed a charging tension in the air. Horses whinnying uneasily, men stiffening, their whispers dropping down even lower. The padding of soft paws, his well-trained warhorse shifting restlessly under him. He shushed it with a gentle hand, the poor beast not quite relaxing but quietening. "Grey Wind," he murmured, almost to himself, "I've missed you."

His uncle was to lead the van, but he and Rickard Karstark would take the main. "Lord Rickard," he told Karstark, "we should set out. I will have word sent to my uncle." As though it was a springtime picnic that they set out for and not death.

"Your Grace." Karstark bowed his head from the saddle. He smiled, the hard, reckless smile that he had been wont to wear ever since he had learned that his sons were dead. The smile of a man who welcomed death. What had his mother told him, bathing his bruised temples with cool water? _It is a terrible thing to lose a father, Robb, but the gods can send no greater grief than to take away a child before its time._ "I pray we shall have good sport."

Robb set his teeth against the man's words and gave the command.

Within the hour, Stafford Lannister was dead, cut down by Karstark as he was running for his horse. The smallfolk, boys and men rallied from the Westerlands who were being trained to use pikes in place of their ploughshares, were dead, almost to a man. Some few had fled, but most of them had been routed - as easy as killing rats, the Freys said. They had themselves a generous crop of noble hostages to bargain with as well.

Karstark led a fair-haired boy before him, his hands bound to the horse's reins, his bare feet bleeding as he stumbled towards Robb. He was a squire, scarcely in his teens, and he looked ready to drop dead in terror. Karstark cuffed his head, none too gently and said greedily, "One of Tywin's nephews. Who's your father, pup?"

"Ke-Kevan Lannister," the boy stuttered. "And I'm Martyn. Please don't kill me, my lord."

"Your Grace," Karstark said harshly, snapping his whip in the air. "You stand before a king and it is not for the likes of traitors to bargain for their petty lives."

"Your Grace." Awkwardly the boy fell to his knees. Fat tears oozed down his cheeks and from the sour stench, Robb could tell he had pissed himself. "I meant no harm."

"Enough, Lord Rickard," Robb growled. "Let the boy go."

"He might escape."

"Look at the state of him!" Robb snapped. "Let him go. I'll not have it said I'm a Clegane who would torture his captives for sport. And," he added, when Karstark began to scowl, "he's worth more to us alive than dead."

"Lannisters breed like rats," Karstark snorted, reluctantly untying the boy. He gave him a kick with his spurred boot for good measure. The boy remained kneeling in the mud, his hands over his head as though to shelter it. "His father won't mind the loss of a young'un. He can fuck his fat sister if he's short for sons - isn't that what they do in King's Landing? I say he's worth more to us dead than alive, Your Grace. A son for a son. How old are you, Martyn Lannister?"

"Thi-thirteen, my lord."

"My Edd was fifteen. Close enough." Karstark caressed his naked sword. There was a fanatic gleam in his eyes that made Robb uneasy. "Let me, Your Grace. Lannister blood for Stark blood. That was how it was done in the elden days, our enemies' blood to feed the roots of the weirwoods."

"Look at him!" Robb snarled once again. "He's no more than a child." _Only two years younger than me,_ he thought, _but no one would call me a child. Tywin Lannister would take off my head quick enough if he could._ "Enough of this, we have more important matters to attend to than haggling over one child. Ser Darrell, see that the boy is kept with the other prisoners - have him brought bread and water and if he is grievously wounded, see to his hurts. Get up, Martyn Lannister. And know that the King in the North is not one to slay his hostages or to take the lives of children."

"Thank you, Your Grace." Ser Darrell Rivers helped the boy mount up behind him and rode away. Karstark's face was furled in an ugly frown but Robb took no note of that.

"I found this in Stafford's pack," Robb said, holding up a scroll. He tossed it to Karstark. "Fresh from Harrenhal. News travels fast."

Karstark glanced through it quickly. "It might not be the truth."

"Why should it not be?" Robb asked dryly. Inside, he was seething, though he tried to maintain a semblance of calm. It seemed to work. "Why would Lord Tywin feed his cousin false rumors when the truth could amount to so much more?"

"Your mother would not have known where to send such a letter to you," Karstark pointed out. "Whereas rumors fly fast. It would be easy enough for Lord Tywin to dispatch a raven to Stafford, before you could ever find out."

"I hope Lord Tywin looks forward to my wedding with as much eagerness as I do, then." Robb scowled and lowered his voice. "We must keep it from the Freys as long as we can."

Karstark shrugged. "Small hope of that. Old Walder has a finger in every pie, if Tywin Lannister knows, he'll know soon enough."

Robb shook his head wearily. "What _is_ my mother up to?" he asked bitterly. "I wish she could have written herself. Oh I know, she would not know where to send a letter and ravens can be shot from the sky but..." He tried to smile. "I sound a boy. No doubt she has her own reasons and no doubt they include what to do with the Freys. But the Tyrells? They are scarce more than upjumped stewards." Too late he remembered that his mother's family had been little more, at the time of Aegon's Landing. Harren the Black had ruled the Riverlands in those days and the Tullys had been rebel vassals in the War of Conquest.

"Upjumped stewards worth ten thousand swords," Karstark pointed out tactfully, skirting away from any mention of the Tullys. "What was Renly's could be yours now, Your Grace. Mace Tyrell dreams of a crown for his daughter, for his blood to one day sit on a throne. Such is the nature of men's dreams. Perhaps he means to try again. The maid is like to be fairer of face than any of Lord Walder's get and her dowry will bring you all the support you need. Sometimes a king must wed for the greater good."

"As I would have, had I take a Frey girl to wife!" Robb snapped. "A king should honor his vows. How else will men know him for a king?" He pursed his lips. "My lord father never once broke his vows. _Never._ His word was richer gold than the Lannisters could ever afford. What will men think of me if I take Mace Tyrell's daughter to wife? Robb the Oathbreaker. Robb the Reneger, whose word is quicksand and whose honor a turd. The girl was Renly's bride - she is no maid."

"Some men like a woman well-seasoned," Karstark said dryly but noticing the look on Robb's face said, "leave it be, man. What's done is done and no earthly use railing against it until we can see clear what to do. Feast your victory tonight, Your Grace, rest and in the morning you can choose what there is to be done. Should we march further south or west?"

"You are right," he sighed. "I am out of sorts." _West_. He had already made up his mind. He would return to his mother and the Tyrell host in his own time, the Westerlands blazing behind his back. Mace Tyrell might think him a pliable boy, still hiding behind his mother's petticoats, forever looking to her for her approval. He would disapprove him of the notion and quickly. _I will show them who is King._

"Battle will do that to a man. You fought well, Your Grace. Lord Stark would have been proud of you. If I were him, I'd rest easy knowing that I'd made such a son."

Robb looked away, embarrassed by this unexpected praise from the usually taciturn Karstark. "When she was Renly's queen she could dream of dandling her babes on the Iron Throne," he said sourly, to cover up the unexpected emotions. "But she and her father will have to be content with the North if they choose to wed me. I am no Renly, I have no wish for a throne that is not mine. I am the King in the North and I fight for duty and what is right."

* * *

_"It would seem the direwolf is gentler than the lion."_   
_"Gentler than the Lannisters," murmured Lady Oakheart with a bitter smile, "is drier than the sea."_

* * *

Where Olenna Tyrell was the true Valyrian steel, Arwyn Oakheart was wrought iron, hard to the outward eye but brittle as glass needles. They were both small of stature and silver-haired but that was where the similarities ended. Lady Olenna was almost old enough to be Lady Arwyn's mother but you would never know it to look at them. Lady Olenna was brisk of tongue, her wit bit sharply but it invigorated you. Lady Arwyn's voice was as a placid river, soft and slow and indolent, parsed with a great many sighs.

Catelyn feared that she would wilt if she had to hear Lady Oakheart sigh one more time that her old bones could carry her along no further. "These old bones have felt too much, my lady," she murmured, on the second night of their march to Harrenhal. "Six sons did I bear my late lord but only four are among the living and the last, my youngest, is to set sail for Dorne." She did not have to explain the expression of grave distaste that crossed her face - Old Oak and Dorne had been at war with each other for years untold. The rivalry ran deep in their blood and would not be reasoned away.

"Ah, but what would you know of loss?" Lady Oakheart sighed wearily. Absently, she patted Catelyn's hand. "You are still young." Young enough to have more children, Catelyn sensed her meaning. _I could not bear that,_ she thought but sometime or another the matter would come up. When they were at peace, when they were at war. If Robb and the girls could marry for the good of his kingdom, then she would she.

"I lost a husband," Catelyn reminded her.

Lady Oakheart shrugged, it was a small matter. "One husband. I would gladly lose a dozen if I could bring back my Aithan and my Anrai." She sniffed dramatically into a little square of embroidered silk. _Gods save us,_ Catelyn thought wearily, _is this what I am doomed to?_ For all her theatrics, Lady Oakheart was no man's fool - her son was a grown man and Lord of Old Oak in name but in deed it was his mother who ruled. Under a guise of greatest piety and delicacy, she had a taste for blood some said.

"I am to leave for my own lands tomorrow," the lady said, perhaps sensing Catelyn's feelings. "A forced march is no place for a woman. While we lingered at Bitterbridge I could command my men and in truth I came to see Young King Renly for myself but now..." she gave a delicate shrug of her tiny shoulders. "My son will serve Lord Tarly in my place. You are still intent on following the army to Harrenhal?"

"I am hardly in the thick of things," Catelyn reminded her. "Lady Olenna, Lady Margaery and I will travel at our own pace, with the supplies. But our presence is necessary." The Reach was certainly no place for her. As for the Tyrell women - well, the grandmother would never be dissuaded from the course of action she thought best and she would drag her granddaughter with her. _If Lady Olenna is Valyrian steel,_ Catelyn thought, _then what is her granddaughter?_ The girl seemed sweet and pliable, neither overly giddy nor grave. A polished enigma. Catelyn promised herself that in time, she would give the matter of Margaery Tyrell's character the attention it deserved.

Lady Oakheart excused herself and with great relief, Catelyn set to writing to her brother. She had already written to Riverrun in great haste, on the first day at Bitterbridge, informing him about the new alliance with the Tyrells. Now she rewrote the same - who knew if the first letter ever reached him at all? Briefly she wondered if her first letter had reached Robb - surely it must have, by now. Briefly, she pondered on what to add to her letter. Advice, yes, that would be good. Edmure might be nearly twice as old as Robb but in nature he sometimes seemed the younger to her.

 _Hold Riverrun at all costs,_ she wrote to him. _Do not stray no matter what the temptation. When your king commands you, it is for you to obey._ He would have to marry a Frey girl in Robb's place but to sweeten the deal, she added that the same pact would be forced upon Lord Tyrell's heir.

* * *

 **A/N: I reworked this chapter, thanks to the help of my wonderful new beta** EmbertoInferno **. I will be making minor - or maybe major - edits to the other chapters and posting them.**


	3. The Three Princesses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> POVs - Arya Stark, Sansa Stark, Jeyne Westerling.

_I hope he dies, Arya thought as she watched him ride out the gate, his men streaming after him in a double column. I hope they all die._

* * *

They said her mother was marching for Harrenhal, a southron army at her back. _She knows I'm here. She's coming for me._ It was a stupid little girl's hope and no one knew better than her how desperate and pathetic it was. But still, she clung to it. As Pretty Pia said, with a shake of her hips, whatever keeps you warm at night. By day, cuffed and kicked about like a cur she told herself that when her mother and brother came to rescue her she'd watch them all swing from gibbets and spit in their black faces. At night, she whispered only one name in place of the string that she had picked up on the forced march through the Riverlands. _Mother._

Men said Lord Tywin would make a stand at Harrenhal. The castle could hold up for years, Weese bragged. They had fresh water from the streams running through it and food enough to last an army for years while their besiegers starved outside their walls. And nothing, but nothing, could breach Harrenhal's walls save dragonflame.

"Lord Tywin's the greatest commander that ever was," a Lannister guardsman in his cups boasted to his drinking companions. "He'll smash the roses, he'll have a plan like he always does."

 _Like he did in the Whispering Wood?_ Arya thought, lurking in the shadows. Robb had not lost a single battle, she knew. He had even captured Lord Tywin's son and kept him prisoner in the Riverlands. The stupid southrons said that he had an army of giants but that was all poppycock. She had never seen a giant in her life and Old Nan had told her that they only lived in maesters' books and perhaps, beyond the Wall where the ice never melted. He did have a fierce great wolf though, that part they had gotten right. Not an army of them, only Grey Wind and if he was lucky and had found her, Nymeria.

But Robb was not with her mother's army, she thought, disheartened, and no one knew where he was. _Mother never sat on Father's war councils like Robb._ And she didn't trust the army she had gathered from who knew where. Roses? Pah! What kind of a sigil was a rose? Even a trout was better. _She needs my help,_ Arya thought, her heart aching for her mother as it never had before. _And the faster she gets here, the faster I can get out._

Ser Kevan, Lord Tywin's favorite brother, rode west with the greater part of the Lannister host. The Young Wolf was on the rampage, he meant to take Casterly Rock to spite Lord Tywin everyone said. Meanwhile, Harrenhal could hold more comfortably without all the men and more idle hands meant more idle mouths, everyone knew that. Scouring the stone steps, Arya heard a great deal when she kept mum and put on her stupid-face. Fractured pieces of information that she tried to puzzle together, frustrating her when she could not. _I should have listened to Septa Mordane,_ she thought guiltily. _Sansa would have known._ Sansa had a poor head for sums but when it came to maps and sigils she was far ahead of the rest of them, even better than Robb and Jon their lord father had once said.

"We'll have to cross the Red Fork, trouble's bound to rise there so close to Riverrun," one of Ser Kevan's dour knights said.

"The old lord's dying and the Blackfish is busy nursing the Young Wolf," his companion told him. "Know what they call Riverrun's heir, the Blackfish's nephew? Ser Floppyfish." He burst out laughing. "A weak reed."

Riverrun! She knew Riverrun - it was her lord grandfather's seat but how far or near Harrenhal or the Red Fork she could not say.

Weese crept up on her while she had her face screwed up and was trying to remember her old lessons. He stuck her a blow on the ear that made her see stars, shouting at her that he'd never seen a girl so slow and stupid. If she wanted dinner, he said, she'd have to gnaw at her own fingers. He wasn't going to feed a lazy slut like her for sure. She gritted her teeth and took it. _Robb's been in battles. If he can stand it, then so can I._

As soon as she could, she hurried to the bathhouse. She found Jaqen soaking in a tub, steam rising around him as a serving girl sluiced hot water over his head. His long hair, red on one side and white on the other, fell down across his shoulders, wet and heavy.

She crept up quiet as a shadow, but he opened his eyes all the same. "She steals in on little mice feet, but a man hears." _How could he_ _hear me?_ she wondered, and it seemed as if he heard that as well. "The scuff of leather on stone sings loud as warhorns to a man with open ears. Clever girls go barefoot."

"I have a message." Arya eyed the serving girl uncertainly. When she did not seem likely to go away, she leaned in until her mouth was almost touching his ear. "Lord Tywin Lannister," she whispered.

Jaqen H'ghar closed his eyes again, floating languid, half-asleep. "Tell his lordship a man shall attend him at his leisure." His hand moved suddenly, splashing hot water at her, and Arya had to leap back to keep from getting drenched.

A sennight after Ser Kevan left, supping with his lords and commanders in the Hall of a Hundred Hearths, Tywin Lannister dropped stone cold from his chair. _It was the peach_ , they said and when they prised open his jaw his tongue was black as death.

* * *

_The girl never wept. Young as she was, Myrcella Baratheon was a princess born._

* * *

On the day Myrcella set sail for Dorne, Sansa could mount her chestnut mare - but barely. Tyrek Lannister, his eye on her straining jerkin which would _not_ lace up to the top, helped her up. Smirking all the while his odious Lannister smile as she gathered up the reins and tried not to wince. Beneath the full skirts of her riding habit, her thighs and calves chafed. They were still raw and bruised from the last beating, not three days past.

Joffrey had been testing out his new cross-bow, a gift from his uncle, on the balcony. In place of straw-stuffed dummies, he had ordered a hutch of rabbits set loose in the walled garden below. When the shooting had not gone his way, Ser Mandon had been bidden to take out his frustration on her. Her bruises had scarcely healed from the last time he had ordered her stripped and beaten as well - when her brother Robb had taken Oxcross and killed many of his Lannister kinsmen.

"You sit in the saddle like a sack of oats, Sansa," the Queen said, riding past. She was on a milk-white mare, her copper-colored gown shimmering with threads of gold. "Or a farmer's wife being dragged to market with the pigs and cabbages." If there was any grief in Queen Cersei's heart at her daughter's parting, she showed none of it on her face. If anything, she seemed more like herself - more waspish and quick to give tongue - than ever.

Her ladies tittered, shading their faces behind their circular palmetto fans. The occasion might be grief but for the younger girls, today was a festival day and they were resplendent in their best jewels and new gowns. Butter-yellow silks and rosy muslins, strings of agate and topaz, pearls woven through fair hair and cauls of gold worn proud on dark tresses.

Sansa had only the old gowns she had brought from Winterfell and most of them scarcely fit her at all, she had grown so quickly in the last year. Beneath their mocking faces, she was more acutely aware than ever that the hem of her blue gown had been let out, part of the length colored lighter than the rest, that the silk was worn and cut in the Northern fashion, the embroidery-work her own. The only jewellery she had left were Joffrey's moonstones, which she wore in her hair today but reluctantly. He would have noted its absence and she had no desire to give him any cause for complaint.

Princess Myrcella followed her mother on a palomino. Her gown was green to her mother's copper, but the cut and the metalwork were the same. She did not laugh like the Queen's ladies. Indeed she passed by Sansa as though she scarcely noticed her at all, her face pale but set.

 _Courage sweetling,_ Sansa had heard the Imp say to her in the courtyard, before their parting. _You are our pride and strength, more than your brothers ever will be. The Martells will see you for what you are - a thing of beauty and a joy forever._

 _Just as Mother and Joffrey saw Sansa?_ the Princess had asked softly and turned on her heel, before her uncle could say another word.

"Sansa!" It was Joffrey, looking kingly on a tall grey palfrey with a mane like a white waterfall. He called for her as he would a favored bitch. "You'll ride with me."

"As it please Your Grace," she murmured, urging her palfrey forwards.

He touched a strand of her hair and she had to repress the urge to shudder. "I like it this way," he said, brushing it behind her ear. For a moment, his fingers caressed her cheek. "Let loose it looks like a mane of fire over your shoulders."

"A horse's mane," a pert court lady said, "or a banshee's, Your Grace?" Her own hair was twisted into the elaborate braids that Queen Cersei favored and piled on top of her head. Sansa hated that fashion and as often as she dared, wore it in the simpler northern styles.

Joffrey frowned. "You are impertinent to my betrothed," he said sharply, putting his hand over Sansa's. "You will apologize to her at once. She's to be your queen someday." The girl, clearly taken aback, murmured a sulky apology and drew back, cheeks flaming. Queen Cersei shot Sansa a nasty look over her shoulder but then, deciding it was not worth her time, beckoned to her daughter to ride with her.

As they rode through the gates of the Red Keep, Sansa realized that Joffrey had decided to play the part of the gallant prince today. Once she had been enamored of him. Now she would rather that he show himself to be the beast that he was. "Your gown looks so old," he said, scowling, "I like you in pretty clothes."

"Forgive me, Your Grace. I have none left."

"So you come to me a beggar maid, hmm?" He chuckled, amused. "A beggar maid in naught but her shift, eh? I've changed my mind. I think I like you better this way. You're not Lord Stark's proud daughter anymore, you're a traitor's sister and you'll be a humble wife to me."

She lowered her eyes. She had hoped that the Queen might eventually take notice of the state of her clothes and order new ones - her treatment of a noble hostage would reflect on her in the end - but the hope was dashed now, with Joffrey's words. _He'll see me naked before he sees me in a new gown._

"Is it true your brother's to be married?"

"I could not say, Your Grace."

"Mother says he's to marry the Tyrell girl. Renly's soiled leavings." Joffrey scowled. "He'll be dead before he can bed that used-up whore. Mark my words, Sansa."

"I shall pray to the Gods that it be so," Sansa murmured, lowering her eyes. Inside, her heart was racing. _What Tyrell girl? Ser Loras's sister?_ She knew Ser Loras had joined Lord Renly and that Lord Renly, after crowning himself the King in Highgarden, was dead. Men whispered that Lord Stannis had killed him but she could not believe that. _What sort of man would kill his own brother?_

"I'll cut out his cock," Joffrey said with relish, "and mount it inside her mouth and then spike both their heads on the walls. Won't that be a glorious sight, Sansa? Maybe I'll have it inside our chamber on our wedding night. To remind you of your duty."

"My duty will be to bear you sons, Your Grace." _Which I can scarcely do with your... thing inside my mouth._

"I'll get you with child on our wedding night," Joffrey said, with a boy's conviction, "after that it'll be your duty to pleasure me, in whatever way I demand." He leered at her. "You'd best pray to the gods that you flower soon. I won't be prepared to wait much longer."

Lord Tyrion had ridden ahead of them to the quayside. When the royal party arrived, he was waiting for Myrcella from the high deck of King Robert's Hammer. "Be brave, daughter," Queen Cersei whispered, holding her daughter close. They would have wept their farewells, mother to daughter, the night before in the privacy of their own chambers. This was the formal parting, between the Queen and the Princess. "Remember that you are a lioness of the Rock, whatever your name. It is for lesser beasts to fear you."

Her own mother had never wept at her parting, Sansa thought. She had used up all her tears at Bran's bedside, she had none left for her daughters. Visibly struggling with herself, Cersei let her go.

"Farewell sweet sister," Joffrey said, the perfect prince. Dutifully he kissed Myrcella's cheek. "I pray that you find happiness with Prince Trystane and do your duty by us and by Dorne." At a glare from his mother, he remembered to add, "I shall miss you." Myrcella was not deceived but she thanked him graciously all the same.

At last it was Tommen's turn. He had been sniffling since they set out from King's Landing and when his sister finally turned to him, he burst out bawling, wet, noisy tears that made his brother roll up his eyes and his mother purse her lips. "I don't want you to go!" he cried. He clung to her and Sansa was reminded of Rickon clinging to her leg before she had mounted up in the stableyard at Winterfell for the last time.

 _Who sings you lullabies now, Rickon?_ She had sung him to sleep every night from when he was a wee babe. _You have no sisters to rock and sing you to sleep, no mother to tuck you in. Who looks after you, my little baby brother?_ She had lied to him, slipped him a fruit sucket when his nurse wasn't looking and told him they'd all be home soon. How could she have ever left him?

And now Myrcella whispered the same sweet, poisonous lies to her little brother. "I'll be home before you know it, Tommen." She squeezed him hard. "I'll write to you everyday and I'll send you a beautiful golden kitten from Dorne..."

Queen Cersei saw her looking and hissed, "Don't you dare laugh, you beastly little girl. You'll never see your brothers again, unless their heads mount our walls. Not if I have anything to do with it."

"I wasn't laughing..." but Queen Cersei didn't hear, she was already busy hushing Tommen and sending Myrcella down the quayside.

The ride back to the castle was subdued. She rode in the front of the column, with the king. Ser Mandon Moore was her shield today. Queen Cersei sagged in the saddle, her face taut with the strain of keeping it straight and blank. Ser Lancel, her cousin, rode by her, trying to cheer her up with his japes but to little avail. Ser Preston Greenfield escorted the snuffling Tommen. Sansa longed for nothing more than to comfort him. He was Bran's age and she had always thought him a little dear. Tyrion Lannister and Lord Baelish were riding together, at the very back of the column. Wrapped in her own thoughts, Sansa scarcely noticed the mounting tension in the air around them.

Behind her, Queen Cersei suddenly gave a high, rippling laugh. _What has she to laugh about?_ Sansa thought, before she caught the edge of naked fear in the Queen's laughter.

Halfway along the route, a wailing woman forced her way between two watchmen and ran out into the street straight in front of Joffrey. High above her head she held a swollen _thing_ , her dead baby with its blue, grotesque face. Horrible as the thing was, the real horror was in her eyes.

"Your Grace let her be," she whispered urgently to Joffrey, who looked as though he had a mind to ride her down. "Mercy is the prerogative of a king. Throw her a coin and let us forget her and be on her way." He was in a good mood today and listened. Fumbling in his purse, he flung a silver stag on the road and Sansa let out her breath. The coin bounced off the child and rolled away, under the legs of the gold cloaks and into the crowd, where a dozen men began to fight for it. The mother never once blinked. Her skinny arms were trembling from the dead weight of her son.

"Leave her, Your Grace," Queen Cersei called out. "She's beyond our help, poor thing."

The mother heard her. Somehow the queen's voice cut through the woman's ravaged wits. Her slack face twisted in loathing. "Whore!" she shrieked. "Kingslayer's whore! Brotherfucker!" Her dead child dropped from her arms like a sack of flour as she pointed at Cersei. "Brotherfucker brotherfucker brotherfucker."

She never saw the man's face, the one who threw the dung. She gasped sharply and Joffrey cursed, wiping brown filth from his cheek. There was more caked in his golden curls and spattered over her gown.

"Who threw that?" Joffrey screamed. "I want the man who threw that! A hundred golden dragons to the man who gives him up."

"He was up there!" someone shouted from the crowd. The king wheeled his horse in a circle to survey the rooftops and open balconies above them. In the crowd people were pointing, shoving, cursing one another and the king.

"Please, Your Grace, let him go," she pleaded.

The king, his rage beyond anything, paid her no heed. "Bring me the man who flung that filth!" Joffrey commanded. "He'll lick it off me or I'll have his head. Dog, you bring him here!"

The Hound swung down from his saddle, but there was no way through that wall of flesh, let alone to the roof. Those closest to him began to squirm and shove to get away, while others pushed forward to see. "Clegane, leave off, the man is long fled," Lord Tyrion, riding behind Queen Cersei, yelled.

"I want him!" Joffrey pointed at the roof. "He was up there! Dog, cut through them and bring—"

A tumult of sound drowned his last words, a rolling thunder of rage and fear and hatred that engulfed them from all sides. "Bastard!" someone screamed at Joffrey, "bastard monster." Other voices flung calls of "Whore" and "Brotherfucker" at the Queen, while Lord Tyrion was pelted with shouts of "Freak" and "Halfman." Mixed in with the abuse, she heard a few cries of "Justice" and "Robb, King Robb, the Young Wolf," of "Stannis!" and even "Renly!" From both sides of the street, the crowd surged against the spear shafts while the gold cloaks struggled to hold the line. Stones and dung and fouler things whistled overhead. "Feed us!" a woman shrieked. "Bread!" boomed a man behind her. "We want bread, bastard!" In a heartbeat, a thousand voices took up the chant. King Joffrey and King Robb and King Stannis were forgotten, and King Bread ruled alone. "Bread," they clamored. "Bread, bread!"

"Back to the castle!" Lord Tyrion yelled. "Back to the castle. Now."

Joffrey was wheeling his palfrey around in anxious circles while hands reached past the line of gold cloaks, grasping for him. One managed to get hold of his leg, but only for an instant. Ser Mandon's sword slashed down, parting hand from wrist. Sansa fought to keep on her courser in the tumult. She must keep close by Joffrey, she must...

She let out a scream as men clawed at her legs, sending needles of white-hot pain up the injured flesh. "I don't have any bread!" she begged, tossing her purse to the crowd. "Please, you must let me go." They were throwing things at her... rocks and eggs, rotten cabbages and filth... She could not see Joffrey or Ser Mandon or the Queen, none of their party. She had to reach them, had to reach the Red Keep... she screamed as a man tried to tear her from the saddle but a moment later blood spurted from the arm that had tried to drag her down, spattering her gown.

"Here, girl." A man vaulted in one leap from his horse to her own.

"Ser Sandor," she blurted out and she heard his low, hard laugh as he made her mare rear up on its hind legs, his naked sword brandished menacingly above their heads.

"How many bloody times have I told you I'm no ser?"

She clung tightly to him, knowing that he was her only safety, squeezing her eyes shut so that she would not have to look. Men and women screamed in agony as he cut them down, and she heard children wailing, children screaming as no child should have to scream... it seemed a long time, but she could not be sure how long, before the noises stopped. When the horse stopped and she opened her eyes, they were in a cool, dim alley. He dismounted and put his arms out to her.

"Quiet now, girl, and quick." Too numb and frightened to protest, she let him pull her down and shove her before him into one of the narrow doors behind them. "Up the stairs you go now." They were narrow, more like a ladder in a hayloft than a proper set of stairs, and the chamber above was narrow and windowless. A few candles in iron cages swung from the ceiling, a bed of straw and moldy sheets was made up in the corner. The walls were naked brick, the rushes carried a sour stench with them as though they had not been replaced in years. There was a sturdy oak chest in the center of the room, a cloak thrown half over it.

"Where am I?"

Sandor ignored her question. "You're bleeding. Are you hurt?"

"No..." He touched her scalp and she winced in sudden pain. So she was bleeding.

"Nothing too bad but you'll want that washed and bandaged. I'll see to that. Are you hungry?"

"No... where am I?"

"I suspected as much. You eat like a bird anyway. Never enough to keep body and soul together." He nodded towards the chest. "There's clothes for you there, put them all on you by the time I'm back lest you'd like me to watch." He leered at her. "Some women do." Her cheeks flamed and she opened her mouth to reply but he put his hand up. "Hush, child. And don't you dare move a foot from this room or I'll tie you to the bed until its time for us to leave."

"Won't you tell me where I am?" she asked softly. "I won't run, you know I won't."

"You're safe, is what you are," he grunted, "Safe as you'll ever be. A lord paid a great deal for you."

"What lord?" The way he spoke frightened her and he could see that for he squeezed her arm in a brief gesture of assurance. It comforted her, surprisingly.

"He means you no harm. He's your mother's friend."

"My mother has no friends in King's Landing." _She never stayed in King's Landing._

"I wouldn't say a friend," he said dryly, "more like an old lover who's going a-courting again." And with those cryptic words he left her. The chest contained a grey homespun gown, as plain as what a serving-maid might wear, patched at the elbows and hem. There was a linen cap to tie over her hair, to conceal it all. The cloak too was shabby and old, black but poorly made. _There goes my vanity,_ Sansa thought. She threw the soiled old gown away. It had served its purpose. The moonstones she slid in a pocket and began to rebraid her hair, to fit better under the cap.

When Sandor came back, with a bowl of water and strips of cloth, she was sitting on the bed, swinging her legs. "Are you going back to the castle?"

"Soon. Once I tend to you. They won't miss me for a span, not while they think I'm in the thick of it."

"Oh. Will you tell them I'm dead?"

"Hardly," he snorted. He handed her the bowl and the cloth and knelt before her. "Dead means a body. No, I'll tell them I couldn't find you. There'll be more than one little girl missing today. Hold still, little bird. I'll try not to hurt you but it'll sting."

* * *

 _I'll wear a gown of golden leaves,_  
and bind my hair with grass,  
But you can be my forest love,  
and me your forest lass.

* * *

She had been sitting at her window, dreaming of the prince who never came for her. The septa was busy taking Eleyna to task over her crooked stitches, she never noticed that Jeyne's embroidery lay forgotten in her lap. Her lady mother would be wroth if she could see her - if there was a sin that Lady Sybell despised above all, it was that of idleness. _No man wants a wife chewing cud and gaping at nothing with fish eyes. Not when she should be at her spinning wheel,_ she would say, _and you have little enough to recommend you as it is, Jeyne._ But her mother was working out her accounts with the steward, Jeyne did not expect her for another half hour at least. A mist of rain, as fine as a bride's veil, drizzled outside the firelit solar.

 _One day I will be a bride in a veil of Myrish lace,_ she thought. Myrish lace cost its weight in gold, her mother would have pointed out sourly, but Jeyne knew there was no accountancy in dreams. She wished they had a singer - she would have very much liked to hear the song about Jenny of Oldstones. Jenny had nothing but her beauty and goodness to recommend her but the prince loved her for her virtues and threw away his kingdom to take her to bride. _And my prince will crown me with goldenrod and roses._

"Daydreaming _again_ , Jeyne?" Lady Sybell's voice cracked out like a whip. She stormed into the room, long before she was expected and Jeyne jumped to her feet at once, flushed and guilty. "Never mind your sorry excuses, girl. Fetch your herb-chest and come with me. There's a man that must be tended to at once."

They had a stillroom of sorts and a crone of erratic disposition to oversee it. Over the years, before her mind went astray, she had taught Jeyne all she knew of midwifery and herblore. While Lady Sybell was a competent chatelaine in all other matters, she preferred not to soil her dignity or her bejeweled hands with those matters. Her grandmother had been a fortuneteller from across the sea, a wisewoman. It would have hit too close to home. She was content to let Jeyne attend to the potions and poultices - another skill to add to the repertoire that was her only dowry. And besides, they could not afford to keep a maester. They had a man who'd been trained to keep ravens, Mother and the steward did all the reading and writing and accounting they needed and as for healing, they had Jeyne and a woman from the village who came in if things were bad enough.

Ignoring her septa's protests, Eleyna hopped down from the bench to help Jeyne gather her things. "What's got a wasp in _her_ wimple?" she whispered. "Can I come with you?"

"Best not. He might be in a sorry state." _Dying or near enough to make no matter,_ she thought. Why else would her mother be in such a sour temper?

Eleyna drew herself up proudly. "I'm twelve and I'm _not_ squeamish."

"Come then," Jeyne sighed. No doubt Eleyna would be underfoot, but she hadn't the heart to tell her little sister that she must stay with their septa. "If you think you can make yourself of use.

They had put the man in the castle dispensary. Her uncle was waiting for her at the door, chewing his lip as he did when he was worried. Uncle Rolph had been their castellan for as many years as Jeyne could remember but ever since her Father's capture in the Whispering Wood, he had seemed to doubt himself more and more with each passing day. Jeyne could understand his plight - the Westerlands had been at peace ever since Lord Tywin Lannister came to manhood and now, for the first time since her uncle's childhood, he had to contest with war on his borders and without the aid of her father's advice. Northern brigands, part of Robb Stark's army, had been reported in their neighbors' lands, snapping and tearing away at the edges like hungry dogs.

 _Poor uncle,_ she thought with a rush of sympathy. _How will he manage with only fifty men?_ The better part of their strength - not that they had many to start off with - had gone east with her father. She resolved to fix him chamomile tea for his nerves as soon as she was free. It could not be easy, having to govern as he thought best in such trying times, even without the added whip of her mother's tongue harrying him along for good measure.

"Jeyne, sweet child," he said, putting his hands on her shoulders, "I want you to do what you can for the poor boy. You are to ask no questions nor talk to him - not that he's in a fit state to speak either. Rollam will be inside with you girls and there'll be a guard outside the door. Shout if you need him."

"Have you sent for a septon?"

"A septon? Why ever..."

"Isn't he dying?" she asked, in some confusion. _A boy,_ she thought. _Mother called_ _him a man._ So he was young then, perhaps no more than her age. "Won't you need a septon to bless him and give him the last rites?"

Her uncle sighed. "He's not dying, no. But he _is_ trouble. Go in now." He patted Eleyna on the head and opened the door for them.

His shaggy red hair was a tumble over the pillow and his face blanched to the color of the linen sheet. The unconscious boy looked younger even than her brother Raynald. Rollam was perched on the bedside table, twitching restlessly like a scalded cat. "Shoo," Eleyna said, shaking him off, "We need to put our things somewhere."

"Of course." He helped them put the chest down and drew the only chair in the room for Jeyne. Eleyna took the bed, taking care to avoid touching the boy, while Rollam began to pace the narrow room.

"Where's he hurt?" Jeyne asked tersely and for answer Rollam pushed back the sheets. They had stripped the boy's shirt off and someone, probably him, had thought to awkwardly bandage his shoulder. The strips were soaked red, through and through, and tensely Jeyne unraveled them. They were stiff with clotted blood, not new then and finally she had to start cutting them off. Poor boy, at least he could not feel it in his sleep. She let out a sigh of relief and said, "Not as bad as it could be, thank the Mother. A flesh wound but it will corrupt if we don't do something about it. It looks to be a day old. Who _is_ he, Rollam?"

Rollam pursed his lips up primly. "That's not for you to know."

"Because we're girls?" Eleyna asked hotly.

Rollam flushed. "Well?" Jeyne asked, not stopping in her work. She dabbed at the wound with her tinctures. "Is it?"

"His name's Ned Snow he said," Rollam blurted out, clearly reluctant to divulge the information. "Some great northern lord's bastard. He came to the door not an hour past, his horse lathered clear through. Asked for some bread and ale, civil-like, at the guardhouse. Our men would have given it to him too but there was something _wrong_ about him, the way he spoke, the way he carried his arms and Ser Conroy had his men seize him and bring him to Uncle Rolph. He said there'd been a great battle near Ashemark that we've not heard of yet and that he'd fled. He begged us not to release him, said his lord father would pay good silver for him, for he had no trueborn sons of his own. And then, before Father could question him, he dropped. We thought he was dead at first."

"Just exhaustion," Jeyne said pragmatically. "He's pushed himself to his limits."

"What battle?" Eleyna asked eagerly.

"More like a skirmish, _I'd_ say. Northern stragglers against the Marbrands, no doubt, if it was at Ashemark like he said. Though you can hardly trust a northman," Rollam snorted. "What else could it be?"

"Or the Lannisters," Eleyna suggested.

The boy's lips moved faintly in his sleep. "What's he saying?" Rollam asked eagerly. Jeyne bent closer but she could hear nothing. If she read his lips, she could make out the word 'wind' but that was all. Perhaps it wasn't wind at all. She shook her head and Rollam turned back to Eleyna. "That's a stupid idea. Why'd they stir so far from Lannisport unless they had good reason to, my girl? Besides, the castellan at the Rock hasn't the gizzard for open battle and Lord Tywin and Ser Kevan are both at Harrenhal."

"The last we heard Ser Kevan was marching west," Jeyne murmured. _And Robb Stark was burning a trail for him to follow, through our neighbors' lands._ The thought stopped her short for a moment. _Ned. Eddard. Snow. Wind. Younger than Raynald, fifteen or thereabouts. And his hair..._ "Will we keep him hostage or will Uncle Rolph give him up to whoever comes asking?"

"Uncle doesn't know what to do," Rollam admitted. "He's in a tizzy. Raynald counsels one thing and Mother counsels the other. And the steward waggles his chins and bleats like a sheep."

"He'll listen to Mother in the end," Eleyna said comfortably. "Or even if he doesn't, she'll get her way by hook or crook. She always does."

The boy was stirring. "Rollam, Eleyna," Jeyne said quietly, pressing her hand over his body to still him so that her brother and sister would not notice. "Fetch him a clean shirt, he'll catch cold elsewise. Bread and broth from the kitchens, a pot of honey, and something strong to wash it down with."

"Will you be alright with him, by yourself?" Rollam asked anxiously.

Jeyne rolled her eyes at her brother's concern. "No," she said dryly, "I fear that he means to ravish me in his sleep." She shooed them off and the moment the door clanged shut, she shook him as hard as she could, knowing her time was short. He was awake, she did not need to shake very hard - it was as though the sound of the door shutting behind them was a signal for him too.

His eyes were the deep Tully blue she had thought they would be. Clear and alert and not fever-glazed as she had feared. He was warm to the touch, but not overly so - he had dragged himself through hell to reach here and she had no doubt that fortified with food and wine he could do the same again. "You're Robb Stark," she whispered. The King in the North. She had suspected but it was one thing to suspect, quite another to know.

The look he gave her, so straight and square, sent tingles up her spine. "I am, my lady. And if there is any mercy in your heart, you'll drop a poison pellet in my wine before the Lannisters come for me."

"I'm Jeyne," she said softly, hoping that he would not see her blush. In the songs, ladies blushed beautifully, like roses, when their princes spoke to them but when she blushed, Rollam said she looked like a beet because her face was so round. She reached for the vial of sweetsleep in the chest. _Just a pinch in a cup of wine will do._ "And I won't let them kill you."

 _A blade,_ she thought pragmatically, _I need a blade._


	4. The Wolf, the Crone and the Bastard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> POVs - Catelyn Stark, Margaery Tyrell.

_We found you hiding we found you lying_   
_Choking on the dirt and sand_   
_Your former glories and all the stories_   
_Dragged and washed with eager hands_

_But oh your city lies in dust, my friend._

* * *

Addam Marbrand would have sallied forth to meet them, burning his life away like the tree on his sigil with four thousand loyal men at his back. He would have died as he lived - gloriously, gallant to the end - and before he went, he would drag down as many as he could. The Brax brothers, older and more treacherous, would have sat tight in the castle, nibbling away at the edges of the Tyrell host for months. Lewys Lydden had squired with Tywin Lannister as a boy, he would have run his sword through his bowels before he gave up his castle. Forley Prester, who had the face of an innkeep and like most innkeeps was no man's fool, might have been able to rout them.

"Luck for us that Lilyliver Lefford always sleeps with a candle beside us bed," Lady Olenna said cheerily. "And luck that he's the Lord of the Golden Tooth."

To be sure, the lordship of the Golden Tooth with its mines and its direct pass between the Westerlands and the Riverlands was a profitable one. With Lord Tywin's untimely demise, Lord Lefford _was_ the seniormost, in age if not repute, of the bannermen left at Harrenhal. But privately Catelyn thought that it had nothing to do with his perceived importance and everything to do with his unseemly haste to save his own skin. If Lord Tywin had thought to appoint a successor before his sudden death, it would never have been Leo Lefford.

After the third day of fruitless negotiations between Harrenhal and the Tyrell host camped beneath its walls, Lord Lefford had found himself unable to bear the suspense for any longer. By dark of night, while the castle slept, he had had his men throw open the gates to their besiegers. For his pains, he had found himself ensconed in the comforts of a tower-cell - with yes, Lady Olenna had insisted on it, a generous supply of candles by night - and promised the hand of a Tyrell grand-niece for his heir. Harrenhal had fallen as easily as a snow-castle under a child's boot and it made Catelyn uneasy. The night before they were to enter the stronghold for themselves, Lady Olenna grew quite garrulous over her specially broached cask of summerwine but Catelyn barely tasted it. She resolved to depart for Riverrun as soon as could be arranged, pleading her father's poor health.

 _I should write to Lysa..._ It was her duty but duty to her sister, after what had transpired in the Eyrie, left a sour taste in her mouth. _Perhaps she will bend now that she knows that Robb is not alone._

"Garlan Tyrell, Lord of Harrenhal," Lady Olenna mused rapturously, "how well it would sound, don't you think, Margaery?"

"Harrenhal is cursed," Catelyn blurted out, before she could stop herself. _What woman would be so crazed with ambition as to want that for her grandson?_

"Your lady mother was a Whent of Harrenhal," Lady Olenna pointed out.

"It is the castle that is cursed and not the lineage that holds it," Catelyn said.

"Some would dispute that, my lady. The Lothstons were as mad as the bats they drew on their shields - it was in their blood. But perhaps you think it was the taint of the castle? Some queer flavor of damp and mold that crept into their wine from the cellars and thence into their blood?"

Catelyn did not enjoy being made a fool of. Petyr had always said she never laughed enough at herself. She had never understood why she should at all. Margaery rescued her. "Pray tell me more about His Grace, Lady Catelyn," she suggested, "I do so wish to know more about him so that I might make myself pleasing to him."

The girl's earnestness charmed Catelyn. It reminded her very much of how she had been after her betrothal to Brandon - through their letters she had learned everything that there was to know about his likes and dislikes, imagining that she would make him the perfect wife in time. _But perhaps a marriage of ignorance can work out just as well as a marriage of oversalted knowledge._

"His favorite dish is cod cakes. Hardly kingly, but he can gorge himself upon it, like on nothing else. Perhaps it came of my craving for fish when I was carrying him."

"A mother's cravings can be painful." Margaery smiled. "Then I shall surprise him with it, made by my own hands."

Catelyn looked at her doubtfully. "Can you cook?" She could, a little, though no one had ever thought to teach her - what use had a great lord's daughter for cooking? That was servant's work. She had picked up some trifles of knowledge over the years, savories like lemon pies and blandissory that Ned and the children loved, but she would never be able to set her own bread or roast a haunch like a village good-wife.

"Not yet," Margaery admitted, "but how hard can it be if a servant can do it?"

" _How hard can it be if a servant can do it_?" Lady Olenna lilted, before laughing. "Bless your heart, sweet child. That's what servants are _for_. They scorch their hands making our soups and pies so that rings and jewels look better on ours."

Margaery looked down, flushing. "I am sure it will please His Grace if I try."

"It will," Catelyn said kindly, "If nothing else he will eat it with relish knowing that every portion is flavored with a good wife's love." She would have mentioned it later, but she saw no harm in the announcement now. "I have been working on a sketch that I think you might like to see. At Riverrun our smith made a crown for Robb, based on the old sketches from a maester's book. Its very like the crown the old Kings of Winter used to wear." She looked at Margaery. "As my son's queen, I thought you should have a similar crown made, but softer, fit for a woman."

It had been made in moments snatched during their march to Harrenhal, on nights she could not sleep for longing of Ned or the children. Charcoal on parchment. The crown was an open circlet like Robb's, but in place of his nine longswords she had made seven. Nine was the number of the ring of the weirwoods that had been planted to seal the pact between the First Men and the Children of the Forest, so Old Nan said. Seven was the number of the new gods the Andals brought with them, the southron gods that were Catelyn's and Margaery's. Twisted round the seven prongs was leafed ivy, the hints of flowers and foliage.

"A king must slay his enemies. It is to him to be the voice of justice and vengeance," she told Margaery, "but the land cannot grow nor prosper without a queen." _Without the Maid, the Mother and the Crone the rivers will turn to dust and the green trees to stone,_ so the wisewomen said. The septons would call it pagan if they ever found out, but this was not men's knowledge. It was the women's lores that mothers passed on to their daughters when they first bled. So it had been for a thousand years and more, both in the north and the south. _There is magic in the flowering of a maiden's body and a mother's womb._

She looked around her, at the firelight glowing in pools in the empty cups of wine, in Margaery's upturned, thoughtful face and the caves of Olenna's eyes. _A girl who calls herself maiden. A mother without children._ She felt a laugh bubbling up in her throat - the wine had made her maudlin. She had drunk too much - had that been Lady Olenna's intention after all? _Well, at least we have a perfect crone._

"It's beautiful," Margaery said, eyes shining. Doubt gnawed at Catelyn's heart though it was unworthy of her - the girl's courtesies were too polished, her tongue too smooth as it flattered. What a queen she would make - but was she the bride she would want for her son? "Your Ladyship is too kind to me."

Lady Olenna nodded approval as well. "It should be made of rose-gold," she said, "I know His Grace's is bronze and iron but that's what we make our swords of, don't we? Soft gold for a queen. Once we have ourselves the proper smithy at Harrenhal..."

 _You'll melt down the crown Renly gave your granddaughter, won't you?_ Catelyn thought cynically. _Tyrells never wait, do they? You grow and you grow and you grow, never thinking that you might burst if you don't take heed._ Suddenly their company was intolerable. "It is late," she said, ready to take her leave, "and we have a long day ahead of us if are to enter Harrenhal tomorrow."

It _was_ a long day and not in the way she expected.

She rode in through the gates, as through the dragon's maw, on a chestnut courser. The last time she had ridden through had been nigh on seventeen years before, at Lord Whent's great tourney. She had had a white palfrey with a saddle of red leather and tinkling bells and Brandon had ridden, jesting to make her laugh, at her side. _He gave me a white rose for my hair. That made his sister jealous.  
_

If she strained her eyes for them, she feared she would see their ghosts. Lyanna in a gore-stained white gown, blue roses in her hair. Brandon, throwing back his head to laugh the reckless laugh that she loved. Lord Stark who had always been kind to her, though her lord father called him frosty. Elia of Dorne, pregnant with a son who would never been weaned. The Prince of Dragonstone and his white knights.

Lord Tarly helped her dismount. "My ladies, you are to be lodged in the Kingspyre Tower. I apologize for-"

"Tut tut, Randyll, they'll do," Lady Olenna interrupted testily. "We're not some fine, finicky ladies who need to be swaddled from the world. We three widows are as tough as boar-hide. We'll make ourselves comfortable enough." Catelyn thought Margaery looked a shade green though, no doubt envisioning dreadful hardships. But Lord Tywin had run a tight ship - their quarters were clean and as far as she could see, free of rats. Catelyn had expected nothing more.

They had not brought any ladies-in-waiting on their march to Harrenhal, just a handful of serving-women to cook and clean and launder for them. Lady Olenna was full of plans for her grandson's future seat. "We'll call your mother from Highgarden," she told Margaery, "she and your father will want to be here for your wedding and crowning - what a spectacle that will be! And for all her faults there's no one better to run a castle than Alerie. We'll send for some Frey girls, Lord Walder'll be in his cups with joy - look them over. If your brother's to marry one of them and Ser Edmure another we might pick out the most amiable among them ourselves. A man would never think to look past a pretty face but that's not what makes a good wife..."

"What about His Grace?" Margaery asked Catelyn anxiously. "We've not had word of him, not before Bitterbridge."

Before Catelyn could reply, Lady Olenna said quickly - perhaps too quickly? - "Oh he'll turn up, men always do at the most inconvenient moments. He was riding west, now he'll be bound to be riding south and making all speed, no doubt."

"Ser Kevan was riding west as well, with the greater part of the Lannister host," Margaery pointed out but her grandmother waved her words away.

It had made Catelyn uneasy too, the lack of news and letters from both Edmure and Robb. She had been able to ignore it, on the way to Harrenhal with more pressing matters of concern but now that they were settled it gnawed at her. Of course Robb was fighting a war but... _He has Uncle Brynden with him,_ she comforted herself, _and if anything ill were to happen to him, I would know in my heart._ And Kevan Lannister would have to cross the Red Fork if he made west - surely her brother in Riverrun would never let him pass untouched. Of course his orders had been to hold Riverrun, no more, no less, but he must have the gumption to act as he thought best.

What would happen to their alliance if anything should happen? Would it fall apart like flowers in winter? The Tyrells would melt away, to attach themselves to some other king, she thought. _Or they will ask for Bran._ It was not such a far-fetched idea - after all, she had married Ned in Brandon's place. _And if they do not ask,_ she knew, _I must offer my o_ _ther sons to them. We will be picked apart elsewise._

A child tiptoed into their room, quiet as a mouse. "Child, have hot water drawn and a tub fetched. We haven't bathed in days," Lady Olenna began but the waif slipped up next to Catelyn.

"A message?" she asked the child, scarcely noticing her. When she said nothing, she asked, more impatiently, "Are you mute, girl?"

"Mother, it's me." The voice was so high and thin it sounded like she would burst into tears. "Arya."

* * *

_Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill every time._

* * *

"You shouldn't be up at this hour, Grandmother, you'll catch a chill."

"Old bones never sleep sound, Margaery. It's _you_ who shouldn't be up." Her grandmother studied her. "Guilty conscience keeping you up? Or is it lovesickness?"

 _Fear,_ she could have said but instead she knelt to stoke the fire higher. "They look so sweet together," she murmured, trying to make small talk, "Lady Catelyn and her daughter." They slept in the same bed. Margaery could not remember the last time she had slept with her mother - had her grandmother ever allowed it? "Poor little thing, I can't imagine how she's suffered."

"She'll mend fast. Children always do," her grandmother said practically. "I mean to send for Elmer Frey to join us here - that's the one she's betrothed to. He can squire for Fossoway, get to know his intended."

"That's for her mother to decide, surely."

Her grandmother snorted. "Lady Catelyn is slow, slow as a pig in clover," she said. "Ned Stark didn't have the wits the gods gave a barnyard bantam, so I've heard, and his lady wife's not far behind. I fear for the end-product of their coupling. Promise me you'll never turn into a blockhead, Margaery, no matter how stupid your husband turns out to be."

"I promise." She settled her grandmother's shawl more comfortably round her shoulders. "I'm worried about Robb Stark - we've had no word from him or of him since he ventured west. What if he's dead?"

"If he's dead, he's dead," her grandmother said practically, "Don't weep for a boy you've never seen, Margaery, it's as stupid as weeping for Florian the Fool. If he's dead I'll heed bite my tongue and heed Tarly's advice - he warned me the boy was like to die at the worst possible moment. We'll take our custom elsewhere. To King's Landing if the Lannisters prevail, to Dragonstone if Stannis does. Incidentally, that's where he's marching, or rather sailing to - King's Landing." She chuckled. "Cersei will be in a dither, the only man in the world she can't seduce at her gates, her pious good-brother. He'll pop her golden head right next to her brother's and her son's if he can."

"Is she as beautiful as they say?" Margaery had never been to King's Landing but her grandmother had, at the Queen's crowning.

"She was when I saw her but years in the yoke to an oaf like Robert Baratheon could have changed her," her grandmother said. "I saw her as a girl when she was one of The Old Queen's maids-in-waiting as well - beautiful, beautiful like nothing I've ever seen since. Far prettier than you. No, don't scrunch your face, Margaery. Its the truth. You're not a beauty, whatever else you are - come, I thought you knew. Don't tell me all those singers and poets have turned your head? You're pretty enough, my girl, but you're no beauty."

Margaery smiled and shrugged, pretending that it did not matter very much to her. "A clever girl doesn't need beauty to be attractive, that's what you always said." It was easy for her grandmother to say - by all accounts she had been a great beauty in her youth. Why else would the Targaryens have wanted her for their princeling? And so had her mother, it had been a true love match between her father and her. _Why, oh why, did Loras get the lion's share of the looks in the family?_

She was just brooding on the injustice of it all when the door was flung open. Lord Tarly stormed in, Maester Gwydion trailing along in his wake like a flustered little towboat. "Is Lady Stark still abed?" Lord Tarly asked abruptly.

Her grandmother put a finger to her lips. "Is and will be, if you keep your voices down. What's amiss?"

Maester Gwydion, whom grandmother had brought with her from Highgarden and who had been given charge of the ravens at Harrenhal for the moment (Harrenhal's last maester had been hung two days past), shuffled over to her. "Dark wings, dark words, my lady."

"So they say." The letter had already been opened and Margaery tried to peer over her grandmother's shoulder to read it.

Lord Tarly scowled mightily when he saw what she was up to. "If I may be so bold, Lady Tyrell, I think this no matter for a maid of your granddaughter's tender years. She should be abed."

"If I am old enough to be queen," Margaery said, her voice soft and steady, "then I am surely old enough to be kept informed, Lord Tarly." Her grandmother squeezed her hand for comfort. She said nothing but she did not dismiss her either.

"Its for Lady Stark," Margaery said, "why are we-?"

"Shh, child."

It was from Lord Karstark, hastily scribbled and poorly spelled - not a scribe's polished hand but his lordship's own. Margaery sucked in her breath sharply as she read. Before her grandmother finished out, she burst out, "How can this be? He's not a lost battle yet." Lord Tarly shot her an annoyed look and she hastily lowered her voice to a whisper.

"No man is immune to defeat," Lord Tarly pointed out. "We thought the same of Jaime Lannister before the Whispering Wood. Ser Kevan is a seasoned commander, more than a match for a green boy and he was permitted to pass unmolested right under Edmure Tully's nose. He's as great a fool as they say."

"So Robb Stark is dead?" Margaery asked.

"You young people forget as fast as you read," her grandmother complained, folding the letter and handing it to the maester. "It says missing."

 _But missing is often code for dead,_ she thought. "Lady Stark must be told," she said.

Her grandmother's slap caught her off guard. "By the Mother's cunny," she hissed, "have I taught you nothing or were you cursed with your father's wits? We'll do no such thing - not yet at any rate. Hold your tongue if you wish to stay or take yourself to the nursery where you belong." She addressed herself to Lord Tarly, ignoring her granddaughter. "What do you propose, my lord?"

"We hold fast, my lady," he said grimly. "At least until we have news of how affairs stand at King's Landing - who holds the city holds the throne and that will change everything. Lord Tyrell must be informed at once."

"Margaery, start a letter to your father now. Maester Gwydion will add to it once you're done."

Humiliated and with her cheek smarting, Margaery went to the cupboard to pull out a sheaf of parchment and ink. She would not cry, she would not. By the time she had finished a brief letter to her father, informing him that Robb Stark was presumed lost near Ashemark after an encounter with Kevan Lannister's forces, his army in shreds and straggling eastwards, she had managed to hold herself in check. Her grandmother took the letter from her without glancing at it, she was still deep in conversation with Lord Tarly.

"...If I had to place a bet, I'd bet on Stannis," she was saying. "They are almost evenly matched in numbers, but we must remember several of the Stormlords went over to his side at Bitterbridge. Neither the Queen nor the Imp have a head for battle and they can expect no help but themselves. Tywin Lannister's dead, Jaime's in chains in Riverrun and there is only the slightest chance that Kevan will reach them in time."

"Best not bet, my lady," Lord Tarly said with a grim smile, "your last didn't work out as well as you expected."

"He's missing, not dead," her grandmother reminded him tartly. "My son must wait somewhere more convenient than Highgarden. If Stannis wins, it should be Dragonstone he should look to crack - that's where Stannis kept his wife and daughter. If Cersei, then we must join our forces and take the city." She stroked her garnet beads, a gesture of worry. "I suppose the grieving mother will have to be told? Bother."

"She should be warned to keep it to herself. The less that know, the better."

"So we are to stay allied to the Starks?" Margaery dared ask.

A sly look crept into her grandmother's eyes. "Of course, sweetling - why would you ask such a thing? We are not oathbreakers, are we?"

Margaery bit her lip, feeling hopelessly outwitted. Her grandmother was lying - they had something planned, Tarly and she. And unless she proved herself dependable and not the silly girl they thought her now, she would not know. "The letter said the northerners were moving eastwards, to Harrenhal."

"They were. What's left of them anyway. Lord Karstark was not good enough to give us any hard numbers."

_So you think they have failed. So you think we do not need them any longer - not while there is hope that Stannis and Cersei Lannister can smash each other to bits and Father can sweep up the pieces. Father..._

"Since you are so fond of playing the dutiful good-daughter," her grandmother said acidly, "you can wake Lady Stark yourself and break the news to her. Here, Maester Gwydion's already sealed up the letter again for you."

* * *

_Brienne turned, and saw a ghost._ _Renly. No hammerblow to the heart could have felled her half so hard. "My lord?" she gasped._   
_"Lord?" The boy pushed back a lock of black hair that had fallen across his eyes. "I'm just a smith."_

* * *

The mother had to be told, but no one thought to tell Robb Stark's sister. _She's only a child,_ Margaery reminded herself, but no true child had eyes like those. Margaery made a half-hearted attempt to befriend her, expecting to be rebuffed. She was not disappointed. The girl kept to herself or clung to her mother like a shadow. Margaery's new handmaid, eager to buy her mistress's favor, reported that she was often spied in the godswood.

"I hear you like to pray in the godswood, Lady Arya," she mentioned over supper one night. "It would please me if I might accompany you - I know so little of the northern ways but I would like to learn."

Lady Catelyn smiled encouragingly at her daughter. With an effort, Arya Stark bit back the first words on her lips - venomous no doubt - and said, "I don't _pray_ in the godswood, my lady."

"Oh? Then what do you do?"

The brat smiled nastily at her, as though she could read her like an open book and liked what she saw not a bit. "I practice killing things," she said, slamming her dagger into the table with such force that chips of wood went flying across. Margaery gave a tiny shriek of dismay when one smacked her cheek. "Like this."

"You might have better success with her," Margaery suggested to Brienne. "You both like pointy things."

Brienne looked doubtful. "I'll try my best if that's your wish, my lady," she said, "but I doubt we'll get along very much." They didn't. It was even worse than Margaery hoped.

"You're a southron freak," Lady Arya told her, when she caught Brienne, who had no talent for stealth, following her to the godswood. "Go tell your mistress that."

"Her mother indulges her too far," Margaery complained to Loras, knowing her resentment to be childish and beneath her. She would never have dared speak so to her grandmother but she needed to vent and no companions other than her brother and Brienne. It was strange and unfamiliar territory for her, to be so alone - all her life she had been surrounded by her ladies or handmaids, cousins and kinswomen from all branches of the family, her mother's young wards. She was beginning to hate it.

"She's just a child," Loras said practically. "Only ten. You can bring her round if you want."

Margaery held up a gown that was embroidering on. A garden of flowers it was to be. "A token of peace between us," she said dryly.

Loras laughed. "I've never seen the little lass in a gown. You're wasting your time, sister." He seemed inordinately amused by the Stark girl - but then he did not have to try to make polite conversation with her or sit with her when duty required. And he was not constrained to the castle as she was. He could ride a horse, go out scouting. If he still nurtured his grief for Renly in his heart, he did not show it nor speak of it - at least not to her. When she spoke his name, wanting to help, he would always deftly turn their talk to other matters. "Better teach the little spitfire how to hold a sword than sew her a gown. Send Brienne of Tarth to her. She'd thank you all the more kindly for it."

"I _could_ send Brienne to her for that," Margaery admitted. "But she's already suspicious of her. She hates southroners with a deadly passion."

"Who can blame her? She saw her father's head taken off." Loras stretched lazily, chuckling. "Perhaps I'll take her in hand someday. I could do with a squire and our northern princess has ten times as much spirit as Dickon Tarly."

"Like as not you'll never need to," Margaery said spitefully. "Nor should I need to court her favor if her brother's dead."

Loras, one of the few in the castle who knew of Robb Stark's disappearance, squeezed her hand. "Courage, sister," he said, teasing her. "We can always buy you another crown. And this time we'll find one without any sisters attached."

"Or mothers," Margaery said lightly. "Lady Stark has no humor at all." _They can always crown Father in my place,_ she thought though. _The King in the South._

"Stop pacing," her grandmother said crossly. "You'll give me a megrim."

"I have nothing else to do," Margaery said petulantly. The strain of waiting, forever waiting, was wearing on the both of them.

"Well, go riding," her grandmother said impatiently, "you always loved that."

"I can't. You forbade me from crossing the castle gates."

"Well go to the forge then. Take your pet lout with you - what's her name again? The Evenstar's daughter? They'll be reworking the gold today - I gave them the crown Renly gave you. The smith improved on Lady Catelyn's sketches."

The smithy was hardly a place of great interest to her - all smithies were the same, dark and hot and dreadful - but she had really nothing else to do. She put on her oldest, drabbest gown and took Brienne with her to the Armory.

The Armory adjoined the castle smithy, a long high-roofed tunnel of a building with twenty forges built into its walls and long stone water troughs for tempering the steel. Half of the forges were at work when they entered. The walls rang with the sound of hammers, and burly men in leather aprons stood sweating in the sullen heat as they bent over bellows and anvils. The heat was as terrible as though she had walked straight into the dragon's maw and her head swam. _This was not a good idea._

"Why, that's Lady Arya," Brienne said in surprise and so it was, Margaery saw. She looked the waif she had the first time Margaery had seen her - patched and faded leathers, oversized, scuffed boots and her hair a bird's tangle. She was standing too close to the forges, watching one of the smiths at his work.

"I wonder if her mother knows she's here," Margaery said through gritted teeth. "Lady Arya," she said, sweeping forward. "You mustn't stand so close to the fires."

The child turned and at the sound of Margaery's voice, the smith turned as well. She stopped short, suddenly giddy. _It's only the heat,_ she thought, clutching feebly at Brienne who stood rooted to the ground. She could not hold herself steady. _I'm seeing ghosts in the h_ _aze._

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: OK, so things might be confusing since I keep adding stuff to the end of chapters and some of you might not have read them, but this is how things stand at the moment:
> 
> After some of the Stormlords defected to Stannis at Bitterbridge, he went to Dragonstone and from there he's planning to sail to King's Landing now. Tywin Lannister intended to keep the siege at Harrenhal when he knew the rest of Renly's army was marching there, but sent half his men away with Kevan Lannister - either to King's Landing or to the Westerlands as Kevan thought best. Seven days after Kevan left, Tywin died unexpectedly at dinner, just as Catelyn, Olenna, Margaery, Loras and their army reached Harrenhal. After three days of trying to negotiate a truce between the lords left at Harrenhal and their besiegers, Leo Lefford - a notorious coward - opened the gates to Harrenhal. Heads and spikes happened, some people were thrown into the dungeons to be ransomed and Leo got himself a cozy tower-cell.
> 
> Meanwhile, Catelyn had sent a letter to Robb informing her about the new Tyrell alliance but it never reached him since he was marching west. He came to know about that when he found a letter from Tywin in Stafford Lannister's pack at Oxcross and was pissed off. Still mad, he decided to march west, probably because he wasn't thinking straight and wanted to "prove" that he didn't need the Tyrells. He had some minor victories on the way but Kevan Lannister decided to march west when he heard Robb Stark was on the rampage.
> 
> In the books Edmure disobeyed Robb's orders and turned on Tywin when he was trying to cross to the west. Here, warned by a letter from Catelyn, he stayed where he was supposed to and Kevan's men passed easily. On the way, Kevan received the news that his brother was dead and was lucky enough to find out that Robb was near Ashemark at that point. There was a battle between Robb and his northmen and Kevan and the larger half of the Lannister army and the northerners were divided, if not completely shattered.
> 
> Robb managed to flee and drag himself, with an arrow wound in the shoulder, to the Crag nearby. Lord Westerling is a hostage at Seagard - captured during the Battle of the Whispering Wood - so Lady Sybell's brother, the castellan Rolph, is in charge and not very good at what he's supposed to be doing. Jeyne managed to smuggle Robb out before dawn by dousing the guards with sweetsleep and giving Robb as gold and provisions as she dared, though no one knew it was her. Karstark and the Blackfish managed to gather up the remnants of Robb's army and flee east, towards Harrenhal, and sent a letter to Catelyn on the way giving her the news that Robb was missing. Kevan is now at Casterly Rock and there is a slight chance that he can reach Cersei in King's Landing before Stannis does.
> 
> Also, Cersei no longer holds Sansa hostage but Sandor is still with Joffrey. Littlefinger is still in the city because he was never sent to negotiate for Margaery's hand at Bitterbridge. Lysa and the Vale are still neutral and up to till this point everyone thinks so are the Iron Islands. The riverlords are scattered all over the place, Edmure and Hoster are at Riverrun and Roose Bolton and his men (on foot) have joined Catelyn at Harrenhal. Mace Tyrell is at Highgarden, having gathered up the rest of his bannermen, poised to act on his mother's orders. Garlan is with his father and if the troops leave, Willas is supposed to be in charge of Highgarden. Phew - if there's any tangles in the story or something that sounds like it would never happen/OOC/sounds plain wrong, tell me in a review so I can fix it.
> 
> Also Arya is being nasty to Margaery and Brienne because she doesn't trust them.


	5. Little Sister

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> POVs - Dickon Tarly, Loras Tyrell, Arya Stark.

_Randyll Tarly solved the mystery the day he sent two of his men-at-arms to summon her to his pavilion. His young son Dickon had overheard four knights laughing as they saddled up their horses, and had told his lord father what they said._

* * *

His mother had not wanted him to go to Bitterbridge with his lord father. "Please Randyll," she had begged, holding him to her bosom. "He is too young, only ten. Let me keep him for a little longer." He had feared that his father would show her the wrong side of his fist, as he did when he was wroth, but he had only told her brusquely to pack his things.

She had, sobbing under her breath, as she packed the socks his sisters had darned for him and the new green tunic with the red huntsman she had embroidered for him. Last of all she had slipped the sword the castle-smith had forged for him, shrunk adroitly to fit a boy's hand. "Come home safely, my little knight," she had whispered, stroking his hair. "Come home to me soon." He had promised, trying to be brave about it, but the lump in his throat had turned to tears in the end.

At first, on the march from Horn Hill, he had been bitterly homesick. Though he would never admit it to his stern father, he had missed his mother's cuddles and kisses, going to sleep with his sisters and their kittens and roughhousing with the castle children who were his age. There was no one of his age to talk to, all the squires being much older, harder and fiercer with no time for the likes of him. But then at Bitterbridge, in the bustle of King Renly's camp, he had decided that he quite liked being a page. If you were quick and quiet and made yourself useful, there was no end to what you could learn. It was like playing a game, Dickon decided. The whisperers' games.

Harrenhal was even better than Bitterbridge.

When his lord father said that King Robb's sister had been found in Harrenhal, he had been excited. He had never seen a princess with his own eyes before - in the songs and stories they were all young and fair, with hair of gold. Princess Arya was _not_ his idea of how a princess should look or act like - a wild little creature, Lord Rowan called her and then laughed and said that the Frey boy who was to marry her would have the ride of a lifetime. She wasn't pretty or charming, but Dickon found himself fascinated by her all the same. She was his age but she wasn't like any of the little girls he knew. Not even Lyla the butcher's girl, back at Horn Hill, willful as she was even she called him "little lord" and curtseyed to him when he was his father.

He was the one to tell Lady Margaery that the princess spent most of her time alone in the godswood. She hadn't asked for it but she'd thanked him sweetly all the same, pinched his cheek and gave him a coin for his trouble. He'd have exchanged the coin for another pinch on the cheek from her.

"What are you doing?"

She whirled so fast he hadn't time to duck. The blade hit smacked into his ankle and losing his footing, he fell out of the branch. The water cushioned his fall some. Coughing and spluttering, he looked up to find her skinny sword at his throat and her face inches from his.

"Little southron spy," she hissed. "Do you know what I do to spies?"

"I'm not a spy," he said weakly. He wasn't, he was an _informer_ \- Lady Margaery had said so herself. There was a difference.

"You're a liar too." She grabbed a fistful of his tunic and studied the badge.

"Horn Hill," he said to help her out. He wasn't very good with sigils and house words either - that was Sam's thing. "I'm Dickon Tarly, Lord Randyll Tarly's heir." He held out his hand.

She shoved him back into the water. When he rose again, she had settled herself on the grass a few feet away from him, her blade in her lap. "I'll let you go this one time," she said coldly, "as long as you don't follow me again. I fought Prince Joffrey and he was bigger'n you. I can fight you too."

"You never did," he insisted. He'd heard the story too. "You didn't beat him with a sword, you set your wolf on him. You couldn't win against anyone with a sword - the way you practice with it is all wrong."

"I could kill you," she said softly. "I've killed fat little boys before."

She was lying, of course she was but he decided not to point that out again. _You must never call a lady a liar,_ his mother had told him. _No matter if she is, it's not chivalrous._ The same must go for princesses. "Why'd you hold your sword that way?" he asked her curiously. "That's not how my master-at-arms taught me. And it's shaped funny too. Too small and skinny, my father had the smith make me a heavier sword than the smith was right for me because he said there was no use coddling me."

"My brother had Needle made for me," she said, getting up. "And I never had a master-at-arms to teach me."

He took that as his cue to rise as well. His tunic and breeches were soaked through and through. "I could teach you if you want," he offered, "Lucas says I'm uncommonly advanced for my age." He slid his sword out and offered it to her - it was longer and thicker than hers and far heavier, he thought. But then, she was a girl. Maybe girls were supposed to have different swords - they never did in the south but maybe it was different from where she came from. "I named it Stormdancer."

"That's a stupid name." She took the sword from him, eyes widening at it's weight. "It's heavy," she acknowledged grudgingly, turning it back and forth to study it.

"It is. And it's not a stupid name - I named it in honor of King Renly. He was Lord of Storm's End, see." He wondered whether he should name it again because now he served King Robb. "And when I'm a man grown I'll have Heartsbane - it's Valyrian steel it is." He puffed up with the pride of it, even the Lannisters didn't have a Valyrian steel sword to call their own.

"My lord father had Ice," she said, handing him back Stormdancer. "It's Valyrian steel too. He took it south with him but they cut off his head with it. Now King Joffrey has it." She looked away and he wondered whether she was going to cry but she mastered herself. "You can show me how you use your sword, if you want."

"I will," he said, "as long as you show me how you hold yours and tell me why it's so funny."

"It's not funny," she said. "It's the way a water dancer holds it. And that's what I'm going to be when I'm grown up - I'm going to go to Braavos and be a water dancer."

"You can't," he told her, positioning himself to show her. "You're to be married to a Frey."

She gave him a grim smile. "If he can take me, he can have me," she said. "But he can't because first I'll carve him up into little chunks."

That was how it started. She knew her way all around Harrenhal and if he didn't talk too much or make a nuisance of himself, she let him follow her. Often she would take him to the Armory, she was good friends with one of the apprentice smiths. That one of the apprentice smiths turned out to be the old king's _bastard_ was a source of great frustration to him, when he found out. He had seen King Renly of course but mostly from afar, at tourneys and feasts. That Gendry the smith looked at all like the king had never struck him. There were so many people with black hair and blue eyes - how was he to know that this one was special? The only good thing was that his father didn't know he knew the smith from before - he would never have heard the end of that.

The bastard was to be kept in a tower-cell till they could decide what to do with him. "You shall serve him as a cupbearer," his lord father told him.

 _Why does he need a cupbearer?_ Dickon wondered, confused. He must have been pouring his wine for himself all these years, he could do it now.

"A noble captive must have a cupbearer," his father intoned, giving him a meaningful look. "You will attend him as a page as well, see to any special needs or requests that he makes. Befriend him, so to speak."

It dawned on him a moment later. "Oh," he said. " _Oh_."

Gendry Waters had been assigned quarters next to Lord Lefford, in the Widows' Tower. The upper stories were for high-born hostages, and the lower floors contained the dungeons where the rest of the Lannister captives had been thrown. The smith - Dickon could never think of him otherwise - was pacing the floors when he arrived.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"I'm to be your cupbearer," Dickon piped up. He scanned the room quickly - it seemed comfortable enough, he should have no complaints.

"I don't need a little lordling to serve my wine."

He'd expected that. "Would you like me to stay and entertain you?"

The boy seemed amused. "How would you entertain me? It's Dickon, right?"

"I'd want to be entertained if I wasn't allowed visitors. I brought merels if you play them," he said. "And books from the library if you want."

"Merels will do fine," Gendry said quickly, flushing. "You can teach me."

"He knew the princess from before," Dickon reported to his father that night. "The Black Brothers were taking him to the Wall to save his life and they took her with them as well as a favor to Lord Stark. 'Cept he was dead by then. They seem good friends."

His father, who had questioned Gendry closely himself, knew all that. "I suspected as much. She came to me herself today, entreating permission to visit him. She brought the Lady Margaery with her as well. I did not know them to be close but desperation breeds strange alliances." He stroked his mustache absently. "Ah well, what harm could three girls do? They have little else to do, it seems. You will be present when they visit, keep your ears close to the ground and you'll do well, Dickon."

"Three?"

"The Lady Brienne," his father said, frowning. "It seems that Lady Margaery does not see fit to heed my advice."

Lady Margaery came armed with her harp and more books, Lady Brienne with flowers from the godswood and a vase to put them in. "I know how hard it must be to be so confined," she told Gendry quietly, "especially for such as you, who was once so free." Princess Arya brought only herself - and her sword which always kept on her person.

"I thought you might like these," Lady Margaery suggested brightly. "I have always had a head for romances but men, I am told, like weightier stuff - war and bloodshed and histories of war."

"I can hardly read, my lady," Gendry said gravely. "I can scrawl my name, read a printed list and I can cipher a bit but that's all. No one thought to teach a smith to read."

"Oh, of course," Lady Margaery faltered. "I'm so sorry."

"Just because you can't doesn't mean you don't have to," the princess pointed out, sensibly enough Dickon thought. "No one taught me to fight. I learned all by myself."

"I'm too old, Highness," the boy said dryly and Princess Arya screwed up her face because she didn't like being called that. "And besides, what's the use of it? I'll never be a maester."

"You've nothing else to do," Dickon added reasonably. "We can teach you." Sam had taught him to read and write since he was very little, he was a good teacher. Surely Dickon could be as good if he tried.

"I'm slow and stupid. I was born low," Gendry said, turning away. "And there's nothing you can do to change that."

Lady Margaery sighed and sat down at the window. "Oh leave him be," she said, "you're the most troublesome children I've ever encountered." She ruffled Dickon's hair as she said that, to take the sting from her words, but he was sure that she truly meant it for Arya. "Gendry, you shall sit by me and entertain me."

"I shall, m'lady?" He looked bewildered and apprehensive.

"Oh yes," she said, strumming her harp lightly. She gave him a mischievous smile. "And you shall tell me all about the fashions as they were when you were last at the capital. Have you ever seen the Queen before? What's she like?"

Gendry drew a footstool and sat at her feet, apparently not thinking it proper to refuse such a great lady. "A handful of times," he said, "at a tourney once. Feast-days and ceremonies when the King and she drove down the streets. She was..."

"I'm going to teach him to read," Arya whispered to Dickon, her small face set. "Whether he likes it or not." Dickon thought the extra venom in her voice was because she didn't like the way her old friend was looking up at the Lady Margaery. "And _you're_ going to help me."

They called Gendry The Bull for the helm he had made and for his stubbornness, but Princess Arya was little behind. Day by day, she wore away at him and finally he relented and said they could try and teach him all they wanted, they'd only be wasting their time since his skull was too thick for maesters' letters to be hammered in. "But you're not," Dickon said, "you learned how to play merels quick enough and you started beating me on the very first day. You're _not_ stupid, Gendry, why do you always say that?"

"That was luck," Gendry insisted. "I'm not a lordling like you."

Lady Brienne looked at him with sympathy. She was a very good and kind lady, Dickon thought, even though she sometimes acted as though she was touched in the head. He liked her and he felt safe with her, though he could never say that in front of his father. "I know how you feel," she said, "I've been there too."

"Been where?" Princess Arya asked, as though it was a real place. Even Dickon knew it wasn't _real_ , it was all in her head, and he told her so.

"It feels real enough," Lady Brienne said, smiling a sad smile as though he was only a little boy and she was so much older and wiser. She wasn't even twenty, she wasn't _that_ old. "To have others always doubt you. To doubt yourself. Keep at it, lad, and show them that you're as good as any of them. Better even. If a woman can wield a sword, a boy like you can learn his letters."

The princess seemed to like Lady Brienne after that, and Gendry _did_ stop being so deliberately stupid when they were trying to teach him. She began to let Lady Brienne teach her though she always insisted that she was going to be a water dancer, not a knight and so she must learn a different way of fighting. "After the war's done, mother said I could have a teacher from Braavos again," she said. "I'll learn the water-dance of Braavos. The one you're showing me is the iron-dance of a knight."

"That's a queer turn of phrase," Lady Margaery murmured.

"It's how the Braavosi say it. Or at least Syrio Forel did." She screwed up her face, as though in pain. "He died. They cut him down when they were trying to catch me in King's Landing."

"That's very sad," Lady Brienne said. "Though I'm not a knight, Your Highness."

"You will be when my brother comes back," Arya insisted. "He'll knight you himself. He's not a hide-bound southron who thinks women shouldn't fight - in the north many women do. Dacey Mormont is fighting in the west with my brother."

"Amen to that," Lady Margaery said sourly. "I can hardly wait to see your brother's face, sweet sister." She threw Gendry an impish smile - of late Dickon noticed that she had taken to flirting with him. That was nothing new, if Lady Margaery had a vice it was that of excessive flirtation. She flirted with her lady grandmother's guardsmen, with the grooms in the stables, comely cupbearers and squires, the Tyrell knights and men-at-arms, even with him at times - but always lightly, gracefully, charmingly. She made it look like an art. It was always done most properly. "I am eager to be made a wife."

Gendry flushed scarlet.

"I sing for you everyday," Lady Margaery sighed, "and yet you have sung me no new songs, gentle Gendry. That was most ill-done."

"I-I don't know any songs, m'lady. Not proper songs that's fit for a lady."

"If they're proper enough for her," Lady Margaery said, nodding to Arya, "they're proper enough for me. Come now, you must sing. I know you do."

Gendry looked down. "Not courtly songs, of knights and their princesses as you sing, m'lady. Nothing like Florian the Fool or Serwyn Mirror-Shield."

"Oh they're not the only songs I know," she said idly, "they're the sort of songs my mother favors at Highgarden but I know a great many others as well. Some new ones I picked up on the march with the army." She began to strum her harp and burst into a full-throated rendition of _The Keyhole in the Door._ "She first took off her slippers, her dainty feet to show..."

By the end of it, Dickon could not tell who was redder - him or Gendry. Lady Margaery's eyes were twinkling as she finished. "The keyhole in the door, my boys, the keyhole in the door. It's safer far to bend your spar in the keyhole in the door!" She winked at Gendry. "The next time I see you, I hope to be paid back in the same coin. A king's son should pay his debts, don't you agree? A song for a song, a jape for a jape. Have you heard the one about the septa and the fisherman? Well it starts off like this..."

* * *

_"She likes his face. She touched his scars two days ago, he told me. 'What woman gave you these?' she asked. Osney never said it was a woman, but she knew. Might be someone told her. She's always touching him when they talk, he says. Straightening the clasp on his cloak, brushing back his hair, and like that. One time at the archery butts she had him show her how to hold a longbow, so he had to put his arms around her. Osney tel s her bawdy jests, and she laughs and comes back with ones that are even bawdier."_

* * *

"What's that you're humming?"

"A new song I learned. Want to know how it goes, Loras?" Without stopping for his answer, she sang, "If all the young ladies were sweet fruits and berries I'd handle their melons and nibble their cherries... and that's only how it starts. Very popular in a brothel, I've heard."

"Enchanting." He smiled at her, her happiness was contagious. "You seem merrier of late. Less out of sorts."

"Oh I am," she assured him, "it was ever so dull being alone with nothing to do but sew or mope all day long. Now we all visit the Waters bastard and do as we please. It's rather like being back at Highgarden."

"We?"

"Oh, Brienne and the Stark girl and Dickon Tarly and me. You should come with us sometimes."

He touched her face gently. "I'm glad you're happy, but no, I could not. It would bring back old memories." He had seen the boy's face, had questioned him sharply himself - once was enough. "Your betrothed will be home soon." They had had letters from Brynden Tully and Robb Stark himself. They were marching east to Harrenhal, their army badly wounded but not dealt a death blow. His grandmother had made the proper motions when she heard the news, but he wondered whether it came as a relief or a disappointment to her.

"So I've heard." She tried to smile gaily but he knew his sister too well. "I cannot wait."

"Never fear," he said, "all will be well. He'll be a good husband to you and if he's not-" He patted his sword lightly. "What else is a good brother for but to defend his sister's honor?"

"Oh Loras," she said bitterly, "if all we had to do to keep the world at bay was to point our swords at everything that we feared. Don't speak like a child."

"You're making a greater deal of this than needs to be made," he said wearily. "Gods above, you hardly knew Renly before you were wed - you'd only seen him a handful of times. You've only heard good things of Robb Stark and you've had the time and opportunity to question those who know him best for yourself. He seems a good man - honorable and courageous and gentle. What more can you possibly want?"

"I loved Renly too," she said fiercely. "I might not have known him as well as you did but I loved him. He was handsome and gallant and always so kind to me."

"Now who's the one speaking like a child?" he asked her bitterly. "Listen to yourself - _handsome and gallant_. Are you a princess in a song then, weeping for your one true love? He would have done your duty by you, Margaery, he would have been kind and gracious to you as he was to everyone. But sister, you would never have won his love and in the end, if you never stopped hoping for it, it would break you."

She clung to his arm. "Oh Loras, forgive me - I never meant to hurt you. We'll not speak of Renly again, I promise. It's just that I'm so frightened of Robb Stark. I can't stand that sister of his and his mother, she does not like me, I know she does not."

"She is never anything but gracious to you-"

"Oh you think like a man," she said impatiently. "You only see what's on the surface and what women put on for show. Oh she's glad enough that she can buy the Tyrell swords for her precious boy with this marriage but as a good-daughter she would rather have someone else. Someone slow and stupid like her, no doubt. Grandmother would call me a fool but she knew grandfather before they were married, she had him twined around her little finger by their wedding day. And mother loved father since the day she met him."

"Don't think about it now. Think about it after you've met him and decided whether you're still frightened of him or not. Then we can think of what to do together." He squeezed her fingers - he could not understand her doubts and fears for himself but he was told it was natural for a maid to fear her wedding day. Poor Margaery - it was hard being a woman. To try to cheer her up, he changed the subject. "So Old Stannis wasn't lying after all, eh? He has Edric Storm, he took him after Storm's End fell. Strange, how quick and easy the castellan died."

"Some would say the way Tywin Lannister died was strange as well," she pointed out sharply, "and no one puts that down to sorcery."

"Because it wasn't. It was the poison in his dinner." He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. "His tongue was quite black when they pulled it out. I wonder what that was - something queer and eastern, Maester Gwydion suggested though he said he couldn't say unless he saw the body for himself."

The body had been buried at Harrenhal, the bones prepared by the silent sisters and waiting, hostages just like the rest of the Lannister host. Catelyn Stark had wanted to send them to Casterly Rock - she said it was the honorable thing to do, the Lannisters had sent her husband's bones back to her after all - but their grandmother had managed to persuade her that it was best to wait a while and see what came up. So far, nothing had. Both the Queen and Ser Kevan Lannister had more pressing matters than a dead man's bones to attend to.

"But who put it?" She smiled smugly at him. "That's a sorcery by itself."

"I've wondered about that myself," he admitted. "It was nothing short of a miracle."

"It was the work of the gods," she said piously, winking at him. "They smote down the monster in his pride - well that's what grandmother says."

He snorted - he could easily imagine her mouthing those pious aphorisms at the right moments. Perhaps she had a book of them. "She would. How do you ever stand her, Margaery? I would go mad - she's forever worrying at me as it is." He mimicked her thin, high voice, " _Your head was made for thinking, Loras dearie, not your sword-arm. Sweetling, I wouldn't let myself be whacked in the head as many times if I were you - life's hard enough for you as it is. Forget-me-nots, Loras my love, a thousand of them for a tourney? Well aren't you the Targaryen grandson I never had!_ "

Margaery laughed. "We rub along well enough," she said and there was no rancor in her voice. She loved their grandmother. He supposed he did too, but there was more of duty - and a little fear, he had to admit - in his relationship with her. "She only has our best interests at heart, you know that, Loras. Without her we'd be nothing."

"There are many happy nothing's in the world," he said dreamily. "Quiet and content nothings. I think I'd rather live in one."

"I wouldn't," she said decisively. "I want to be someone and something. And you do too, it's only moonshine and lovesickness that you're sprouting now."

"Does that someone and something mean queen?"

She looked away. "I don't know," she said feebly, "I just don't know."

He put his arms around her and stroked her hair. "There, there, little sister," he said comfortingly, "you'll figure it out someday. And when you do, I'll be there for you, whether you want to be a queen or a nothing."

"You always are," she said, burying her face in his shoulder. "Never leave me, Loras. Renly left us both and that was terrible but you _can't_. You just can't."

"Renly loved me and I loved him but you're my sister," he said gently. "Blood is thicker than water, remember? Hush now. Dry those eyes and sing me that dreadful bawdy song you were singing. What was it again?"

"The Young Ladies' song," she said, smiling up at him. "It's art."

"Yes that." He winced. "Dreadful as I said, just like your dreadful taste. I wouldn't sing that at your wedding if I were you - the northmen have no sense of humor."

* * *

_Water, as far as the eye could see. Man-things across from it, in their great forest of stone, greater than she'd ever seen. Her brother, she could smell him. He was close. Her brother, beyond the water, in the woods with the man-things that had once reared her and their four-legged beasts. So many of them, oh so many. He must smell her as well. And when he did, he would come looking for her._

Arya sat bolt upright in bed, her heart pounding. "Arya, child," her mother murmured drowsily, "what's amiss?"

"Robb's coming home soon," she blurted out, "him and Grey Wind. They're almost here."

"Yes, sweetling. We had letters from them."

" _No_ ," she insisted, "they're close, within a day's ride of the castle. We could go riding for them and meet them and we _should_. Please mother, please."

"We'll see in the morning," her mother said wearily. "Go to sleep, Arya."

She was right after all. Their scouts said that the northern army was not a day's ride beyond the castle. Her lady mother's eyes widened when she heard and she gave Arya a startled look.

"It was a wolf dream," Arya said.

" _Wolf dream_?" her mother repeated, touching her forehead as though to check whether she was ill or not. "Are you're sure you're alright, child?"

"Yes," Arya said. Belatedly she realized that she shouldn't have told her mother about the dreams. She had so many secrets from her - what was one more? "I have them sometimes," she said feebly and went back to her breakfast. "They're nothing much."

Her mother looked as though she did not believe her but she did not press her. "We'll ride and meet them halfway," she said. "Just you and me and an escort, of course. How would you like that?"

"Not the Tyrells."

"No." Her mother smiled at her. "We wouldn't want them to spoil the moment."

"Won't they find out?" The Tyrells knew _everything_ , so it seemed to Arya. Them or Lord Tarly. Dickon was alright, she liked him enough for a friend but it made her feel uneasy. _They shouldn't know all our business. We don't poke our noses into everything they do - why must they?_

"Not if we keep it a secret. We'll tell them we're going out riding by ourselves, a picnic for just the two of us. Some time to be alone outside the castle - Lady Tyrell knows how much I hate it. Lord Bolton shall arrange for our escort." She patted Arya's head. "Finish your breakfast, child, while I see to things. And for mercy's sake, put on a gown."

"I don't have one."

"You do," her mother said sharply, "the lovely new one Lady Margaery embroidered for you - the one with all the flowers."

She hated that one above all. It was so sickeningly girly, just like something Sansa would adore. "Robb never minded how I look."

"I do," her mother said, "and as I said I don't want anything to spoil the moment. So you can either dress yourself as befits a lady of your station or you can stay here and ask Lady Margaery to teach you how to embroider as beautifully as she does." She pursed her lips, muttering, "More gowns for Arya," and drifted off.

"A picnic! Oh I do so love picnics!" Lady Margaery squealed and clapped her hands, as ecstatic as though someone had promised her a new gown. She'd caught Arya wriggling into the new gown she'd made and simply had to know what was going on. _Dissemble,_ her mother had warned her, _but don't lie to them outright._ As though she expected Arya to understand - that was Sansa's thing. "Short of a ball there's nothing I like better than a picnic!"

"You're not coming," Arya said bluntly. "It's only mother and me."

Theatrically, Margaery's face fell. "I'll be mousy-quiet," she said, folding her hands together, "you won't even know I'm there."

Arya scowled at her but was spared the need to answer by Lady Olenna's chuckle. "Tut tut, Margaery, let her be," the old lady said, with a knowing look in her eyes. "A daughter and a mother should have some time by themselves. No doubt Lady Arya will be pleased to take you on a picnic some other day, isn't that so, child?"

"I think Lady Olenna knows," she told her mother when they were riding out of Harrenhal.

"Nonsense," her mother said sharply, "how could she?" But Arya was sure she wasn't convinced herself, either.

"Can't we send her back to Highgarden?" she suggested.

"Maybe after the crowning," her mother said cautiously, "Lord and Lady Tyrell will be present for it. Or we might take ourselves off - I was hoping to see Riverrun soon. Your grandfather is ill, dying perhaps - I want him to see you as well. The last time he saw you all, you were all so tiny - Rickon wasn't even born then. And now you're all scattered, all over..."

"The lone wolf dies but the pack survives."

Her mother looked startled. "Who said that to you?"

"Father." She sucked in her bottom lip. "I wish we were all together too - even Sansa. Is she still in King's Landing?"

"I hope so, though we've had no word of her for a long while as well." Her mother sighed. "He _would_ say that," she murmured and for a long while, the silence stretched on between them.

They spied the first outriders before noon. "Not long now, m'lady," Hal Mollen said, almost as excited as Arya herself. Her mother was holding her feelings in check but she laughed when she saw Arya squirming in the saddle.

"As much use holding you as a mote of sunlight," she said wryly, "Go, ride on ahead with Hal and Ben. You can greet your brother like the urchin you are."

Arya didn't need a second invitation. She slapped her horse's rump and was on her way as fast as she could. It was all poor Hal could do to keep up. "You ride like a northwoman, m'lady!" he shouted and she hardly heard him. "Have pity on a poor old man!" But Robb wasn't as near as she expected - after a few hours she was just as exhausted and ready to take a rest as her mother had anticipated.

"You could stay with me," her mother pointed out after they'd finished their meal by a brook. "Or you could go gallivanting and exhaust yourself. Oh Arya," she laughed, ruffling her daughter's hair, "why do I even bother to ask which one you would rather do? But about your hair," she said frowning, "we must do something about it. I've heard essence of rose-hips massaged into it every night makes it grow quicker-"

"Oh mother, not now," Arya said impatiently. "Tomorrow I'll rub all the rose-hips and oil you want in my hair but please let me be for today."

"Suit yourself," 'her mother said. "I'll wait here for you two. Mind that you don't forget me in all the tumult." Arya assured her that she would not and then she was on her way ago, feeling not a little like a warrior knight going to greet a princess. That made her giggle - _she_ was the princess and Robb was the knight but she could pretend it was the other way around, surely? And anyhow she would be a warrior princess someday, she was already on her way and learning fast Lady Brienne said. Like Nymeria of Dorne.

By evening, she was no longer galloping. She was exhausted and her horse was lathered. Her escort and she had settled down to a steady trot and Arya was yawning when Hal nudged her and said, "M'lady look. Can you see it?"

She squinted her eyes but yes, she could see it now - how had Hal seen before her? - the thin spreading line of horses and the dust they kicked up. Hal grabbed on to her before she could push herself again. "We will wait here, m'lady," he said. "Better this way, instead of you getting lost in all the tangle looking for your brother. Don't worry, he'll be easy enough to see." He grinned. "The one with the crown on his head if it's too hard for you, m'lady."

Arya glared at him. "I'm not stupid. And maybe he won't be wearing his crown - why should he on the march?"

"Because he'll ride in to Harrenhal by tonight," Hal said practically. "He'll want to look kingly, specially since he'll meet his queen." Arya made a face - she knew Lady Margaery had to be Robb's queen, the alliance was sealed and all they needed now was the marriage, but that didn't mean she had to like it.

He looked splendid and kingly when he came and she felt that her heart would burst with pride. He was wearing his crown, the iron circlet that her mother had showed her pictures of, but his hair... He swept her off her horse before she could say anything to him, crushing her to him so fiercely that she couldn't breathe for a moment. She hugged him back just as hard and he laughed and let her wriggle down. "I've missed you, little sister," he said and she thought _that was what Jon called me, little sister._ "I've missed you so much."

"Mother's going to hate your hair," she said.

He laughed and touched the fine red fuzz that covered his scalp. "Ah it's only hair, Arya-girl. It'll grow back." Defensively he added, "And I like it this way. Less lice to worry about."

"Did you cut it as a disguise?" she asked eagerly. He had made his way in secret back to the Blackfish after he'd been separated from the main body of his army, she knew, days and days later after he'd been lost. Something about an inn near the Tooth. Grey Wind had helped him in some way, though she wasn't sure how.

"You could say that," he said, "though it wasn't me who cut it. It was the girl who saved my life." He was much taller than she remembered, his face older with fine lines fanning out around his sad blue eyes.

"What girl?"

"I'll tell you about her later when I tell mother." Still with his arm around her he said, "There's someone I want you to meet."

"Who?" She hoped it wasn't the girl - she didn't want to share Robb with anyone just now, except mother.

He smiled. "Someone you haven't seen in a very long time." He gave a sharp, piercing whistle. Out of the gloaming, too large shapes loomed. Wolf-shaped and huger than she had thought they thought. She was running towards them, her heart which she had thought full enough to burst had grown larger than she had ever thought it would grow. _So hearts can grow_. "Nymeria!" she whispered, burying her face in her wolf's soft, thick fur, "Nymeria, Nymeria. I've missed you, girl."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Arya has one death left. She used the first on the random person who's name I don't remember and the second on Tywin. Also, for plot purposes, Nymeria managed to get herself near Harrenhal, though that's not the case in the books.


	6. The Black Wedding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> POVs - Robb Stark, Margaery Tyrell.

_"All these kings would do a deal better if they put down their swords and listened to their mothers."_

* * *

"The crowning can wait but the marriage must be _now_."

Robb studied his wine-cup and said nothing. The summerwine in it was a gift from Lady Olenna Tyrell, the oldest, most mellow cask from her cellars she said, a special consignment from Qarth and worthy of a king. The chalice had been presented to him by her granddaughter, on her knees in the courtyard when he had ridden in. Idly he twirled the cup knowing that nothing would aggravate his mother more. Watched the lights glance off jet eyes and snarling fangs of silver - it was a pretty bauble.

"Robb! Are you even listening to me?"

"To every last word, mother," he said. She had clung to him when he arrived, mourned over the loss of his hair as Arya had predicted, as one would over a lost child, plied him with sweets and savories at the feasting table. Now, in their private chambers, she worried at him like a dog over a particularly juicy bone - where she had played the doting mother in public, she was now Lady Stark, his councilor and adviser. Making an effort to focus, he said, "Will that not aggravate the Tyrells? Surely Lord Tyrell will want to be here for his daughter's wedding."

"It will," his mother acknowledged. She paused in her relentless pacing and took a seat across from him. "They might even count it a slight but what is a small slight in the face of our safety? We can always make it up to them at Margaery's crowning."

"Our safety?" Arya was asleep in the next room, Nymeria curled on the foot her bed. Below the table, Grey Wind drowsed. Robb watched them through the door, left ajar, and felt a great tenderness for her. Abruptly he said, "She's been through so much hasn't she?"

"She has," his mother sighed and he knew that she felt his shame. It was a king's duty to defend his people, a knight's to protect women, a brother's to shelter a sister. He had failed his sisters in all three and that was his shame. When he had first heard of what had been done to Arya, it had sent him into a blinding red rage. He had wanted to kill them all, anyone who had frightened her or touched her. _I will never let anyone hurt her again,_ he had her, nor his brothers, nor Sansa if they ever found her again. _Not if,_ he promised himself, _whe_ _n._

"Our safety. An alliance is only words in the wind without a marriage," his mother said and then added, more bluntly, "the blood of Margaery Tyrell's maidenhead is the only lasting seal. What did you think of her?"

"Comely," he said and drained the wine to spare himself the need to speak. It was a safe answer. _But not so fair as Jeyne,_ a treacherous part of his mind whispered. "Her grandmother has excellent taste."

His mother, being his mother, was of course not deceived. "Robb," she complained, "don't play the boy with me. You were six-and-ten on your last nameday. You are a man grown now."

"I hardly saw her and spoke even less," he complained, "what more do you want me to say? A soft voice and a pretty gown and that's all I know of her. Oh, and Arya said she doesn't like her."

"Your sister is intemperate," his mother said, pursing her lips. "And a child besides, a stubborn child at that, whose opinion should matter not a jot."

"Well do you like her?"

"I do. Very much so. She is a charming girl, just the sort I would want you to marry. Far better than any of Lord Frey's girls, for sure." His mother spoke too quickly, as though she needed to reassure herself more than him. He gave her a meaningful look but said nothing.

"So when do you propose we hold the wedding?"

"Tomorrow," his mother said curtly. "She has a gown, we have a godswood and a septon and a score of witnesses, high and low. What more do we need?"

"But-"

"I've spoken to Roose Bolton," she said, folding her hands in her lap. She even gave him a small smile. "It has all been arranged. Lady Olenna will have no cause to object, I trust, once I make matters clearer to her. I have gifts for the bride and the wedding party, it will all be done most properly."

He blinked at her, in awe. She spoke with such certainty that it was impossible to doubt her. "Have you been planning this?"

"Yes," she said, "ever since the day I had your Uncle Brynden's letter that you were alive and well. Your mother is not so great a fool as some would like to think." She snorted. "I trust the Queen of Thorns almost as far as I can throw her."

"That should be far enough," he objected, "she's a tiny wisp of a thing."

"Don't play with my words, Robb," she said sharply. "Olenna Tyrell has as much cunning in her little finger as Lord Tywin had in his whole bod. I would not take her so lightly if I were you."

"I don't-"

She did not let him finish. "Men always do, where women are concerned, and they find themselves made pretty fools of in the end. Do not be one of those men, Robb. If a woman betrays you, whether she be young and fair and maiden or a wisp of a little old woman, you must take off her head as quickly as you would a man's. And always, always remember that our hearts and heads are not soft like our bodies. They can be harder and sharper than any man's, particularly where our children are concerned."

He chuckled. "Peace, mother. All the realm knows of the Lannister queen - that a woman can be as vile or treacherous as a man is no news to me."

"Treachery comes in all forms, my son," she said solemnly. "Loyal men will guard your back but _you_ must be the one to guard your heart. You must armor yourself against the evils of men and women. Trust no one, not even your sweet young bride, nor the mothers of your sons, bastards or trueborn - not unless they prove themselves worthy." She touched his cheek gently. "Someday you will be glad of what your mother told you."

He clasped her hand and kissed it. "I always am, lady mother." He stretched. "If I'm to be wed tomorrow, I expect I'll have no time for anything else. I'll have to send the letter tonight."

"To where?"

"Seagard," he said, "Lord Gawen Westerling is to be set free and sent safely back to the Crag - I promised his daughter I would as soon as I was at liberty."

His mother nodded. She was about to say something more when a cry from the next room startled them. "It's Arya," she sighed. She walked into the next room, where Arya, still asleep, was thrashing on the bed. "Poor child."

He watched from the doorway while his mother put her arms around Arya, stroking her damp hair back from her forehead. "Does she often have them?"

"Sometimes. They come and go, with no rhythm. She calls them the wolf dreams."

 _The wolf dreams,_ he thought. He thought he knew what she meant. He'd had them too.

* * *

_Quick as that, it was done. Weddings went more quickly in the north._

* * *

The sun shone bright as gold on her wedding day. It made a mockery of her fears but from deep within the bowels of the castle, she could hear the wolves howling and in the godswood where she was to be joined to their master, the bats would come out with the gloaming. No matter how hard she tried, she could not seem to think straight.

"How do I look, Brienne?" She tried to smile but tears threatened when she stretched her lips. She spoke too fast, sounding giddy and breathless to herself, "I wed Renly in this dress. A thousand people crowded in the sept at Highgarden to see us and they threw fistfuls of rice and rose petals at us when we walked out so that the smallfolk might see us."

She plucked nervously at the watery-grey silk. "It's beautiful but I wish I had something new. It doesn't seem fitting somehow, to wed another man in the same gown. Don't you think so, as well? Or I should have it altered, the sleeves or the back mayhap - I'm sure the northerners think our fashions too libidinous. But there was no time..."

"You look beautiful, my lady," Brienne said gently. "The Maid herself in all her glory could not be fairer."

"That's what they all say to brides on their wedding day." She rubbed her hands together nervously, they would be raw and red by the day's end if she kept this up but somehow she could not stop herself. All her mother's warnings about the importance of pretty hands and a clean heart had flown right out of her head. _I need you, mamma,_ she thought but her mother was leagues away at Highgarden. "But I'm hardly pretty, even grandmother said so to me. Loras is the rose of the family."

"I'm sure Lady Tyrell did not mean what she said."

"Oh she did. Hand me that pot of rose salve, will you, Brienne? I'll ruin my hands if I keep this up." She'd scattered the contents of her chests all across the room after her grandmother came in and told her, without any inflection whatsoever in her voice, that she was to be married at noon. _No don't sit there gaping at me like a tipsy rooster, Margaery. Finish your porridge and get dressed._ Colored silks and leather shoes were strewn all across the room, a pair of satin slippers wedged under the table. Rings and bracelets spilling out of carved ivory boxes, a mismatched array of lacquered pots of salve and paint on her writing table.

She craned her neck to study herself from the back. The gown was slit behind in the shape of an oval, to bare her slim white back. The sleeves were mere caps of muslin over her shoulders. There had been nothing amiss with that at her first wedding, many of the ladies had worn similar gowns, particularly the younger ones. But now she felt quite naked. "They'll think me a whore." She rubbed her hands with the sweet-smelling salve, Aunt Janna had given it to her in a pretty lacquered pot for her last nameday.

"My lady, please." Brienne grabbed her hands. "You mustn't do this to yourself. Fear is bane to love. You must have courage."

"But I don't," she whispered, "I'm not a warrior like you or Loras, I'm only a girl. A silly, stupid girl like everyone thinks, a pawn on the board to be put on a different square or knocked aside as they please."

"You do. Far more than think." Brienne looked at her earnestly and Margaery held on tighter to her hands. "You loved His Grace, it was plain to see, but you held yourself together after his passing. _I_ could not. You never feared Harrenhal, not like Lady Stark who was fretting herself to bits about it. You have always maintained your temper, your grace and kindness, even in the most trying of times. More men than you know worship you for it. You have always done your duty by your lord father and your family, no matter how young or frightened you were." She handed her the cup of hippocrass from the table. "You are stronger than you think, my lady."

Margaery drained the cup in one go. When she finished, she felt much better. Lighter somehow. "It's a pretty gown," she said softly, stroking the twisted silk roses that tumbled like a waterfall down the train. Delicate leaves, their veins shot with threads of silver, were sewn into the weft of the gown. But the leather vines crawling up the bodice had thorns, chips of diamonds that could draw blood. "Mother had her women working on it for months, though we didn't know who I was to marry then. They were still hoping to foist me on King Robert then." She grimaced. "It's still the prettiest gown I've ever had though. I must endeavor to be worthy of it."

"You already are, Lady Margaery."

"A crown would set it off perfectly," she murmured.

There was a knock on her door and without waiting for an acknowledgement, her grandmother tottered in. "My, but you do look stunning, child," she said. "Too pale though. Come, come it's your wedding you're going to, not your winding sheet." She dipped her finger in a pot of carmine and rubbed it lightly over Margaery's lips. "Pinch your cheeks, you could do with some powder and paint but I doubt Lady Catelyn would approve. Best to look natural."

"How old were you when you were wed?" she could not stop herself from asking.

"Nine-and-ten or thereabouts," her grandmother said carefully. She began to fuss with Margaery's hair, worn in loose ringlets down to her waist under a net of pearls and silver. A maiden's right on her wedding day. "My what a mess you've made of the room."

She was not to be deflected so easily. "And my mother?"

"Younger - seventeen, eighteen, what does it matter?"

"I'm fifteen," she said flatly, brushing off her grandmother's fingers. "I was fourteen when you gave me to Renly." She wiped the carmine from her lips, it left bright red streaks on her fingers.

"That's the way of the world, granddaughter." Her grandmother smoothed the train of her gown. "We'll make up for this... travesty at your crowning, I promise you that."

"With what?" Margaery asked, not able to keep the bitterness from her voice. "A new silk gown? Pretty baubles for my neck and hands? I'll do my duty, Grandmother, but I will _not_ be treated like a child."

"No." Her grandmother sat down on a footstool and looked up at her wearily. "I'm sorry, Margaery. Sorry for the things I've said to you, the things I've done. All of them."

"You're trying to be sweet and win me over." She made a face. "It won't work."

There was a twinkle in her grandmother's eye and suddenly they were laughing, both of them, while Brienne looked on bewildered. "Perhaps I am, Margaery. No one knows your wicked grandmother quite like you do. No sweetling," she said quickly, when Margaery lifted the cup of hippocrass, "A clear head is what you need. Come, Lady Catelyn and her daughter are waiting for you. Any longer and they'll start to think you've let yourself out of the window by winding your bedsheets together. Recalcitrant brides often do. Not terribly original though or effective, so I've heard."

"Did the girl bring her dreadful wolf with her?" For a king of the north to have a direwolf was a symbol of power and strength and status. For a girl of ten, it was a monstrosity.

"No, they're both chained in the kennels with regards to your tender southron sensitivities." Her grandmother made a face. "For today at least."

The Stark women were waiting for them in the outer chamber. Lady Catelyn wore her best, a high-necked green velvet sewn with gold thread and amber beads, the dagged sleeves trailing to the ground. The color went well with her rich auburn hair. Arya wore the gown Margaery had embroidered for her, white with a meadow of summer flowers. Her short brown hair, crowned with a chaplet of flowers, had been combed neatly and brushed till it shone. For a change, she managed to look presentable and almost pretty. Almost.

"You look beautiful, my dear," Lady Catelyn said kindly. She tucked a loose strand of Margaery's hair behind her ear. "Like a dryad from the woods, risen from your bed of petals."

"Thank you, my lady," she said, settling into the role of Margaery Tyrell. Highgarden's daughter, the flower of the south. She would not shame herself or her family. "From you it is high praise." She smiled at Arya. "My but you're fairly glowing today, sweetling."

Arya tried to smile but it looked more like a grimace on her face. "Arya will carry your train," Lady Catelyn said.

"It's heavy," Margaery warned her.

"I've carried heavier," the girl said darkly. She went around and bending over the hem said, "Did you cut yourself? Your gown's all torn at the back."

Margaery flushed but was spared the need to answer by Lady Catelyn herself. "Arya!" she said, spots of color burning on her cheeks. No doubt she was as embarrassed by her daughter's outright rudeness as any mother would be - but did she secretly agree with her? There was no way to tell. "Is that any way to speak to your good-sister? Lady Margaery's gown is as lovely as she is. That's the way these are fashioned in the south - surely you must have seen the like in King's Landing."

"Queen Cersei never wore things like this," the little brat insisted. "Her gowns were all big and thick and heavy. You'd freeze to death if you wore this at Winterfell."

"When I am at Winterfell," Margaery said courteously, "I shall have my gowns made like yours. Beautiful furs like your lady mother's, rich velvets and softest lambswool. But for now, I will cut my cloth to suit the climate. As should we all."

She was to be married in the godswood. Lady Catelyn had offered the sept, suggesting that Margaery might be more comfortable there, but her grandmother had insisted that it should be the godswood. _A man should be married where his gods can see him._ Which raised the unspoken question that Margaery had been so tempted to ask - what about the woman's gods? But she thought she had an inkling of why her grandmother had refused so pointedly - and it had nothing to do with anyone's gods.

She walked through the castle as in a dream, focusing on putting one silk-shod foot after the other. On either side of her they called out her name, squires and stable-boys, knights and lords and men-at-arms, serving-maids and laundresses, cooks and butchers and stewards, northmen in furs and men of the Reach in gaily-dyed tunics. A harper played "The Rose of the South", a fresh-faced young girl sang sweetly along with him. It was a pretty song and a dull one, not bawdy at all. No doubt the singer would expect good silver for his song since he had managed the remarkable feat of likening her to the moon _and_ the sun _and_ the flowers in springtime. Oh, and the first snows in the north.

She smiled for them, but her heart was not in it. Her smiles had been so different at her first wedding. Her father had given her largesse to scatter to the crowd then but today she walked with her hands folded together. Loras was waiting for her in the godswood. He held out the cloak for her, green and gold, her father's colors. No one wanted to be reminded that she was Renly's widow, not today. He smiled as though he could read her thoughts as he slipped it over her shoulders and pinned it in place with a carved emerald brooch. He offered her his arm and said lightly, "No paint then? You look wan, little sister."

"No paint. Robb Stark will have to do with just me." She smiled brightly up at him but of course he knew.

"Sweet sister, he won't know what to do with you when he has you." He squeezed her arm and walked her down to the heart-tree. She had been to see the weirwood at Harrenhal just once before. It had an angry face she thought, vengeful like a wronged man's ghost. Venomous in it's hate. Her gown whispered against the fallen leaves, bloody hands brushing lightly at her ankles and white silk slippers. _It's only a tree,_ she thought, angry with herself and her absurd doubts, her childish fears. _How can you be afraid of a tree, Margaery?_

 _They killed people under their trees._ That was what her nurse would tell her when she was small - that a wicked northman would carry her off if she was naughty and slit her throat under a weirwood so that her blood would water it's roots. That's how weirwoods grew, Marsha insisted, everyone knew that. That's why their leaves were like human hands - little children's bloody handprints. _Maybe it's true after all._

Robb Stark was waiting for them. He wore his crown of iron and bronze and a doublet of blue silk, sewn with scarlet direwolves in leather. His mother's colors but his father's sigil. His heavy velvet cloak was silver and white of course. Without his hair and with the grim, set look in his face it was hard to believe that he was scarcely older than her. She smiled up at him but he did not seem to see it at all.

"Who comes before the god?" he asked. She tried to make out any special emotion in his voice - joy, resentment, fear, tenderness, anger, anything would have done - but she could not. It was a kingly voice, it carried loud and clear for all their witnesses, but that was all _. Not a boy's voice then._ Lord Tarly and her grandmother were both wrong, he might lost a battle but this was no green boy.

Loras answered as he had been coached. His voice carried no less boldly than Robb's. "Margaery of House Tyrell, daughter of Highgarden, comes here to be wed. A maiden grown and flowered, trueborn and noble, she comes to beg the blessings of the gods. Who comes to claim her?"

"I do," said Robb. "Robb of House Stark, King in the North and Lord of Winterfell. I claim her. Who gives her?"

"Loras of House Tyrell, the Knight of the Flowers, who is her trueborn brother." He turned to her. "Sister, will you have this man?"

"I will have this man," she said and whatever her doubts and fears, her voice carried as loud and brave as the men's but clearer, sweeter. _Grandmother will be proud of me._

Loras stepped back and Robb Stark took her hand. Rough and scarred it might be, but it was reassuringly warm as well. They knelt before the heart tree, their heads bowed. Margaery did not know who to pray to, the old gods or the new - either would have seemed sacrilegious in the setting. She was still debating on it when Robb tugged gently on her hand. Feeling the slightest tinge of guilt for not having prayed for the gods' blessings, she rose with him. At her last wedding she had known exactly what to do.

She faced him. Deftly he undid the cloak Loras had thrown over her shoulders and in it's place, wrapped her in the white-and-silver of the direwolf. "It is done," he said, half to her and half to himself. He twined his fingers through hers and raised their hands high over their heads. "It is done."

The singers began to play again. They started up "The Wolf in the North", a ditty that had been doing the rounds since Oxcross. " _And the stars in the night were the eyes of his wolf, and the wind itself was their song_." No doubt "The Rose of the South" would follow shortly. If some bright mind did not come up with the idea of singing the two together at once.

 _If you sing before you eat, you'll cry before your sleep._ Another of Marsha's stupid sayings - why could she not get her old nurse out of her head? And why today of all days?

They walked through the godswood, through the castle, up the stairs and in to the Hall of a Hundred Hearths, all without saying a word. Lady Catelyn and her grandmother, Loras and Arya and the Blackfish followed behind them. She glimpsed Gendry and Brienne together, Dickon in his handsomest doublet at his father's side.

There was nothing about the great stone hall to suggest that the guests sat down to a makeshift wedding feast, in any way. It might not have been as luxuriant or sumptuous as something her mother would have prepared, but it served well enough. _Lady Catelyn has been scheming behind our backs,_ Margaery thought darkly. _I wonder how._ There were to be seven grand courses, in honor of the seven southron gods. Huge applewood logs were burnt in the stone hearths, their fragrance spreading sweetly over that of the fresh wildflowers and herbs strewn in the rushes. Goldware and silver was much in evidence on the high table, thousands, so it seemed to her, sat down at the lower trestle tables. _Well, we were never at a shortage for guests at this wedding. We have Renly's men and Father's men, northmen and Riverlanders._

Robb escorted her to the dais and drew out her chair himself. They were to sit together under the royal canopy of cloth-of-gold though she was not queen yet, not truly anointed. "Thank you, Your Grace," she murmured and settling her skirts, sat down. She was glad for the thick velvet cloak then. Though the day was warm, it made her feel safe to wear it, to wrap it tighter around herself.

"It's Robb, my lady," he said courteously, "a husband and wife should not stand on false ceremony."

"Then it's Margaery," she said, smiling at him. She began to feel a little better when the cup she had presented him on the last night was set before them. Dickon smiled shyly at her as he filled it to the brim - with her grandmother's wine no doubt. Two hearts that beat as one. A bride and groom always shared a cup and a trencher at their wedding feast. Unbidden, she remembered Renly feeding her the choicest morsels. He had known her for years, had feasted countless times under their roof - by their wedding day he knew exactly what she liked and was thoughtful enough to have served only her favorites.

Lady Catelyn sat on Robb's right, her grandmother on hers. Loras sat next to Lady Catelyn and Arya beside her grandmother.

"Your Grace, may I offer you my congratulations on this happy day?" Lord Bolton was the first to come, Lord Tarly, never one to condone being outdone, not far behind.

"He frightens me too," Robb said lightly, after they'd left. "Lord Leech we call him. Have you heard the story?"

Did he think she lived under a rock? Of course she had. But she simpered all the same, "Why no, my lord. Will you tell me?"

He spoke easily to her, he was courteous and attentive and tried to make her laugh - he was not very entertaining she thought, not like Gendry when he had a mind to it, but she laughed all the same. But underneath it all, she sensed a wariness, as though he was still not quite sure what to make of her. That was fair, she was still chary of him as well.

 _But why me?_ she thought petulantly. _What has a husband to fear from a wife? He can do anything he wants to me. He has all the power and I have none, save that I can wrest for myself._ The thought sent a chill up her spine.

"Cold, my lady?" he asked solicitously.

"Oh no. No."

He touched a fold of her gown. "It's a beautiful gown," he said sincerely, "but I thought you might take a chill in it."

"So your sister said," she smiled. She was smiling too much, she thought, but she had no idea what else to do with her lips. Smile or laugh. A merry little bride - no wonder it came off as false. "I was touched by her concern."

Even he could not fail to hear the irony laced in her voice. He chuckled. "You'd like Sansa better," he said. "Someday you'll meet her. Soon, I hope. More wine, my lady?" He held the cup up to her lips and she took a dainty sip. "I might be tempted to take your lady grandmother to bride in your place, if she brought her cellars with her."

"So Lord Frey once hoped. It was after my lord grandfather died and he was in between wives at the time."

Robb threw back his head and roared with laughter. He looked so much younger when he laughed, handsomer too. Of course he was no Renly - nor Gendry - but he was pleasing enough to look upon. "Lord Frey and Lady Tyrell! That's a match made in- oh gods save me..."

As she had predicted, some bright mind had coupled "The Wolf in the North" and "The Rose of the South" together and the harmony made her want to clap her hands over her ears. "And the rose was his sun and the wolf her stars..."

"Do you sing, my lady?"

"I do. And play the harp and the lyre."

"You have a sweet voice. Will you sing for me someday?"

"If my lord commands it," she murmured, lowering her lashes. "What kind of song would you like?"

"Anything that you might care to sing."

"Oh I have a rather... varied taste in music," she said dryly, nibbling at a custard card. "I must get to know you better before I sing for you. A bride must always defer to her lord husband's choice."

The idea seemed to startle him - but then he was a man. He would have no ideas of the cares of a woman, a wife. "Who told you that?"

"Older women. Wiser women."

"Old but perhaps not wise." He squeezed her hand. "You need only be yourself to please me, my lady."

 _So you say,_ she thought darkly. It was what all men said before they bedded their brides. When the mystery was solved, the magic gone, they wanted everything to suit themselves - and woe betide the wife who still foolishly dreamed herself in her courtship days.

"Your Grace." The Blackfish took her hand and kissed it. He was spare and weathered, but his blue eyes were still as bright and clear as a young man's. _A goodly man to look at,_ she thought. _Many women would still be glad to call him husband._ He still had a head thick with hair and grey only added to a man's dignity, she'd always thought. A pity her father, who dyed his whiskers with Tyroshi paints every moon, never realized that. "You outshine the sun in splendor."

"You are too kind, Ser," she murmured. "My brother and I grew up on tales of your noble exploits and daring feats. It is an honor to meet you in person. Now that we are kin, I hope that we might know one another better."

"I should be pleased if it were so, Your Grace. Many happy returns on your wedding day." He smiled kindly at her and turned to Robb. "I was there when your mother married your lord father, Robb. They might not have been each other's first choice, but they found joy and strength and loyalty in their love. May you find it in your marriage as well."

"Thank you, uncle. My lady and I hope to." He smiled and squeezed her hand, resting on the table.

Loras rose and drew the Blackfish away - no doubt to ask him eagerly about the War of the Ninepenny Kings or how he'd fought off the Band of the Nine or of any of the other great battles he'd been involved in. _Strange that he never married,_ Margaery thought. _He could have had almost any woman he chose._ _He even burnt his bridges all those years ago with his brother over taking a wife. Perhaps he might be..._

She had no time to finish the thought. A maester, his grey robes whipping around his skinny ankles, hurried in. He looked neither to the right nor left but made straight for the high table, forcing squires and serving-men to jump out of his way. "Your Grace," he said urgently, "there is grave news."

"From where?" Robb asked, already rising.

Among the clatter and clamor of more than a thousand rising as their king rose and walked out of the hall, Margaery heard the maester say, "Castle Cerwyn." Lady Catelyn rose as well but her grandmother caught her arm when she began to get up. "Not you, sweetling. They won't want you there." She grabbed on to Arya Stark as well, before the girl could flee. "Nor you. You're only a child." Margaery watched the Blackfish sweep out of the room after his niece.

"Am not."

Her grandmother gave her a measured look and Arya sighed, knowing better to argue with that look, and sank back into her chair. "The letter was from Castle Cerwyn," Margaery told her. "Do you know where that is?"

The child nodded. "It's only half a day's ride from Winterfell. Lord Medger used to bring Jonelle and Cley to play with us when he visited." She chewed her lip and asked plaintively, "What's wrong?"

"I don't know, child," her grandmother answered. "But no matter what it is, you must hold your head high and your back straight. A princess should have courage."

Margaery handed her a cup of wine. _It must be news from Winterfell then if it's so grave. Is it the Stark boys? Is is the castle? Dark wings, dark words._ "Drink up. I think you're going to need it."

Arya drained it in a go and Margaery worried that it would make her giddy. She was such a small thing. "Can I have Nymeria with me? She'd help."

"A wolf in the banquet hall?" Her grandmother's eyes looked ready to pop out of her head. "Most certainly not."

It seemed an interminable time before the Blackfish came back. He looked years older than he had when he had stepped out of the hall. "My lady," he said to her grandmother, "If you would come with me?" Margaery followed after them, though he had not asked her to. Arya slipped up behind her, her face as white as chalk. It seemed a long walk to Lady Stark's chambers. None of them spoke on the way _\- what is there left to say that will not be said in a few moments?_

Robb was at the window, his face turned away from them. Arya ran across the room to him and took his hand. Lady Stark stood rooted in the center of the room, a letter in her hand. _The weirwood tree,_ Margaery thought detachedly. _Her face is just like the one they cut on the weirwood tree._ Her nails scratched the delicate silk of her gown as she grabbed a handful.

When Lady Catelyn spoke, her voice carried like a cold draft. "My sons are dead," she said, curling her fingers into a fist as though she would strike them all dead with her hate and her grief. "Bran and Rickon are dead."

* * *

_"Margaery is a maiden!"_  
 _"She is not. I examined her myself, at the behest of His High Holiness. Her maidenhead is not intact. Septa Aglantine and Septa Melicent will say the same, as will Queen Margaery's own septa, Nysterica, who has been confined to a penitent's cell for her part in the queen's shame."_  
 _I do hope the little queen and her cousins enjoyed those rides of theirs._

* * *

She'd plucked the rose petals off herself, pink and damp they'd clung to her fingers like slivers of flayed skin. Some handmaid had scattered them on the marriage bed while the rest of the castle made merry at the feast, and now the bride stripped them off, to be tossed down the privy chute.

When she had wed Renly, Loras had carried her up the stairs and set her on the counterpane, embroidered with a gigantic pair of golden antlers and strewn with yellow petals. She had had her hair to wrap around her, but that was all, and though she tried to make herself sound brave with bawdy japes, it had not been pleasant to have all those leering men in her chamber.

Tonight she kept vigil in the wedding chamber alone, in a carapace of gold silk and Myrish lace. The Qartheen nightgown underneath, of sheerest linen, was not made for warmth - it was made to be tugged off by a bridegroom's eager fingers. _Your lord husband will be inflamed with desire by the sight of you in it,_ Lady Taena had assured her when it was packed in her wedding chest, to be taken with her to Bitterbridge. But it never had, of course. Might it inflame Robb Stark? Not tonight. But someday?

She was just about to pour herself another cup of mead, wondering whether she might snatch a few moments' sleep for herself, when the door swung open. He wore neither his crown nor his wedding attire, but a plain tunic and breeches. "Your Grace," she said, sweeping him a deep curtsey and hastening to pour him some mead so that they need not speak awhile.

He took it from her without a word and drank deep.

"Is it to your liking?" she asked, the solicitous bride.

"Oversweet," was the terse answer and then he murmured so low that she could not catch the next few words.

"Beg pardon, Your Grace? I did not hear..."

"There was nothing for you to hear." He stripped his tunic off and sat on the edge of the bed, bending to pull off his boots. "We have a duty, my lady."

At first she had not dreamed the wedding night would go ahead, not after the news they'd had but her grandmother had sent her to her chamber, all the same, warning her to be prepared for anything. She had joined her for an hour and Loras after her, but for the rest she had been by herself, straining to hear the watchman call out the hours. The last he'd called out was the hour of the ghosts. _Still a while from dawn then._

She hovered around him, vaguely aware that it should be _her_ kneeling before him, taking off his boots and bathing his feet in warm water but he seemed so hard and cold that she did not dare. "May I serve you, my lord?"

"Blow out the candles."

 _Men like to watch,_ Lady Taena had told her, _watch their brides strip to their skins and then fondle themselves, moan in pleasure. Most noble wives won't let their lord husbands take even a peek, they consider it beneath them, shameful. But that's not what my mamma taught me in Myr._

She doused them, one by one, so that the only light in the room came from the red glow of the embers in the hearth. She drew off her robe, slipping it over the back of a chair and sat on the bed.

"I grieve for your loss, Your Grace." As she said it, she knew she had made a mistake but there was no way to go on, save forwards. "I never knew Bran and Rickon but I-"

His fingers encircled her wrist. "Tell me true, my lady," he said quietly, "are you a maiden?"

She had dallied with a squire, and once a traveling singer with hair like spun gold, stolen kisses in the stables and arbors, but she was a maiden. "I am," she insisted. "Anyone who was at Highgarden on my wedding night can vouch for me. My lord father, my lady mother and grandmother, Lady Merryweather, my brothers-"

"They would all serve me lies, to suit best themselves. I am asking _you_ , my wife. My helpmeet." For a long moment, he said nothing, nor did she, waiting on him, but then he continued, "You need not fear me, Margaery, nor is there any need for lies between us. If you are not, you can tell me now and I will never let the word loose. I will take you for what you are." With an obvious effort, he said, "I have never lain with a woman before. If you were Renly's-"

"I never was." There had been women, older wives, who had cautioned her to modesty on her wedding night. Lady Taena had not been one of them. _Fortune favors the bold,_ she'd said, winking with her kohl-lined black eyes. Margaery covered her new husband's mouth with hers. When she had finished, they were both gasping. "I am yours alone, my husband. For now and forever."


	7. Words and Wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> POVs - Gendry Waters, Robb Stark, Arya Stark, Alerie Tyrell, Jeyne Westerling.

_"You know who the boy is," Ned repeated patiently. "That is not a question."_

_"The boy is my apprentice," the master said. He looked Ned in the eye, stubborn as old iron. "Who he was before he came to me, that's none of my concern."_

_He decided that he liked Tobho Mott, master armorer. "If the day ever comes when Gendry would rather wield a sword than forge one, send him to me. He has the look of a warrior."_

* * *

Alone in the tower cell, his old garments might serve but in the banqueting hall they paraded him like a princeling. A second-hand princeling perhaps, with tarnished gilt scrollwork on his tunic and moth-worn cloak, but far finer than any apprentice-smith. Harrenhal was big enough to contain a dozen mummer-troupes' wardrobes, no doubt a serving-woman had been given the task to root through the old chests and find fitting garb for the king's bastard.

 _Why blue though?_ He wondered. The colors had been chosen as though someone had given a thought to his complexion and what would look best on him - why would they do that? He decided to dismiss it as a coincidence. Or mayhap it had been Pretty Pia who had been given the job - she had hinted often enough that he was welcome to slip in her bed whenever he wanted - and _that_ had been when he was only the smith's lad.

At the wedding feast he had been seated above the salt for the first time in his life, with knights and highborn squires and fine folk who could reel off a list of dozen names if you asked them who their fathers and grandfathers were. They'd set a guard on him too but so long as the summerwine flowed, and they set courses of buttered quail and saffron-speckled duck's eggs before him, he had no intention of running.

 _And where would I go if I could?_ He had no home but the one he'd left in King's Landing. Truth be told, Old Mott had been a good master, as masters went (though all the boys loved to complain about him) but would he still be there in King's Landing? Him or his smithy? _Maybe Stannis Baratheon's taken the city and sacked it, for all we know. Maybe they're all dead._ The thought sickened him in a way it could only do to a Kingslander. There were cities across the Narrow Sea, Master Tobho was fond of saying, cities so lovely that they made King's Landing look like a gargoyle's turd but dammit, King's Landing was _his_ city. His in a way nothing else had ever been.

Gendry sat down to table the next morning with thousands of others. The bread was soft and fine, the ale hearty, but men focused less on the food today and more on the gossip. Something had happened in the last hours of the wedding feast and today, the rumors flew across the room as black and heavy as a plague of locusts. The king's brothers had been slaughtered in their sleep. The Greyjoy heir, who had been fostered at Winterfell from boyhood, had gone mad and chopped their heads off with a kitchen cleaver. The Ironmen had set the king's castle to torch and were raiding the North.

 _Arya's little brothers,_ Gendry thought and looked around the high table for her but she was not there. The King and Queen sat enthroned in solemn state, both crowned though Queen Margaery had not been anointed yet. Where her hair had flown loose the night before, today it was bundled up in a gold caul and her pewter gown was as stiff and high-necked as though made for Lady Stark.

"How come there's no sheet?" a man complained. "There should be a bloody sheet pinned behind her, proof that she came as she was."

Another, with a golden rose pinned on his breast, threw him a dirty look. With monstrous primness, he said, "It would not be seemly for such a thing to be displayed. Her Grace is a _queen_ , not some slut from your parts. Wherever they are."

The first warmed up. "Queens are women under the sheets, aren't they? Or did Renly diddle his little rose after all?" Gendry couldn't tell from which parts he came - certainly not from Highgarden, nor from the North from his accent. Somewhere in the Riverlands perhaps? Or a bounty-hungry sellsword or hedge-knight who'd attached himself unnoticed to the cavalcade and liked to make trouble? There were plenty where that came from.

The second half-rose to his feet, his hand wrapped around the hilt of his sword. "Be careful how you speak of Her Grace, Queen Margaery-"

"Or what?" He slammed his hand on the table. "You'll run your soft cock through me just like you did-"

 _They'll start spreading shit about her too, once they've worn out the talk about the King's brothers,_ Gendry thought. That frustrated him - Margaery had done nothing to deserve it. She was sweet, innocent even for all that she sang like a soldier's doxy and laughed like a pennywhore flaunting her jugs above the window. It made him want to protect her when he thought how hurt she would be if she ever heard the rumors.

Tymon Bowlegs, his northern guardsman, tapped him on the shoulder. "You're wanted at the high table."

"By the King?" That did surprise him.

"The one and the same."

When he went up to the high table, he saw that the queen's gown was studded with baby pearls and jet beads. She gave him the tiniest smile when he bowed to her and King Robb. "Your Grace."

The king waved to him to rise. "Gendry," he said, studying him. "You look little like your father to me." Queen Margaery opened her mouth to say something but then abruptly, shut it. She fiddled with the rings on her finger as her husband continued, "But then I saw him in late in his life, when he was far gone from the flower of his youth. There are many who assure me that you look so like him, as he was in his best days, that they were reminded of a ghost. My half-brother takes much after my lord father, but I am cast in the mold of my lady mother's family."

He could think of nothing to say to that so he bowed again.

"Our fathers were fast friends from boyhood," the king said and he looked sad, "did you know that?"

"Yes, Your Grace. In King's Landing it was common news when Lord Stark arrived."

"I had friends when I was a boy," King Robb mused. "My brother, Jon. My father's ward, Theon." He grimaced. "Loss and betrayal. Now I have no brothers either." Queen Margaery squeezed his fingers but he pulled his hand out of her grip. "Are you loyal, Gendry Waters?"

"I think so, Your Grace. I've never had any chance to be otherwise."

That made him smile, a wan smile but a smile all the same. "You are strong I know, as a smith's apprentice how could you be otherwise? Would you like to be a knight?"

The abrupt turn caught him off guard. "I'd like to be a ser," was all he could say. "Don't know how good a knight I'd be. Your Grace."

"A knight is as good as his sword-arm," King Robb said, "or at least in our days it is so. How else could creatures like Clegane be knights? You follow the Seven, I take it, being southron-born. You are strong. You can be a knight."

"Begging Your Grace's pardon but I've never been-"

"You're young still." Gendry thought that marvelous cheek from the king, who was barely sixteen. "You can squire first," he said, as though the decision was already made. Gendry didn't dare suggest otherwise. "You will squire for my grand-uncle, Ser Brynden Tully. The Blackfish."

"A great honor," Queen Margaery murmured when Gendry's eyes widened and he let out a tiny squeak. "There are boys who'd give their sword-arms for such a chance. I know Dickon would. His father would gladly hold the blade himself." _What would the Blackfish want with the likes of a Fleabottom rat like me?_ Gendry wondered then decided that this smacked all of King Robb's hand. But why?

"Then he'd make a poor knight without his sword-arm," her lord husband said shortly. "Well, what do you have to say to that, Gendry Waters?"

What was there to say? "Thank you, Your Grace," he said, bowing meekly like any arselicker. Awkwardly, he added a courtly thanks, "I am honored beyond words."

Queen Margaery smiled. "Your words need no embellishment," she said graciously, "your face speaks more eloquently to us." Gendry wasn't sure whether he liked the idea of that, though she was right no doubt - Mott'd had told him his face was like a woman's privy parts in that it wanted some covering. "But Ser Brynden will coach you in courtly words as well as daring deeds, I think."

The King nodded. "I hope, in time, that we can be friends," he said, with just a touch of a boy's wistfulness. Was it cultivated or was it instinctive? Gendry could not tell - but then he had never been good at reading people. What good did he stand with kings? "Just like our fathers were."

 _But my father all but killed yours,_ Gendry thought, as he made his final bow. _He dragged him to the city that killed him. And he was a king too, who missed his friend._

After breakfast, he was not taken back to his tower cell. He wondered whether it was the last he would see of it, now that he was to squire for the Blackfish. But instead he was taken to the godswood. "Lady Stark's bidding," was Tymon's gruff reply when he asked. He hadn't been to the godswood more than once before and never to the heart-tree. But then, he'd never been to the sept either. Gods were for men who knew the names of their fathers, who knew where they came for and where they were going. Not for bastards who should've been put down at birth.

_Did my father even know her name? Or mine?  
_

The girl and the wolf were wrapped up round each other so tightly that it almost gave him shivers. He'd seen pictures like that in one of Tobho Mott's costly books, skinchangers they were, heartless sorcerers who could summon ice and lay the land low with winters that lasted a hundred years. _The mark of the beast was on them._

"Arya," he said awkwardly, from a distance, but she did not seem to hear him.

Tymon gave him a little shove. "Go on with you, you know her. I 'spect her mother sent you to give her comfort."

"So the rumors are true?" he asked in a quiet voice. _They were little boys,_ he thought, _almost infants._

"True as I'm standing." Tymon sighed. "Gods pray the Queen give His Grace a son. And quickly."

 _But not too quick,_ Gendry thought darkly, kneeling next to Arya on the ground. _Then they'll be saying it's Renly's babe she's carrying._ Not that Queen Margaery would have to worry about a shortage of rumors - if he knew men they'd be calling her everything soon enough, from a randy southron slut to a frigid bitch who wouldn't give the king a good enough fuck. They'd say the same of any queen.

"Arya," he said. Gingerly, he put his hand on her shoulder. Her wolf stared up at him with bleary amber eyes and surprisingly, licked his fingers. Still he held his hand steady on Arya's shoulder, sensing that her monster liked him and would do him no harm. It was hard though, but one wrong move, he thought, and it'd snap his arm clean off. _Lucky I've never been afraid of animals._ "She likes me."

For a long while they sat still together, so long that Gendry's knees began to ache on the hard ground and cautiously, he dared shift his position. A wind skittered leaves across the wood and they fell from the trees, clinging to Gendry's shoulders and Arya's hair. It'd grown longer, almost to her shoulders now and soon her lady mother would be wanting her to tie it up, braid it, snap it into cauls like Margaery's. She'd start to make Arya into a lady. Or at least she'd try. _And would that be so bad after all?_ Gendry thought. Arya would hate it, but wouldn't it make her life easier? That seemed worthwhile. _And not all ladies are bad, not like I used to think. Margaery's a lady to the bone._ It was hard to think of her as his queen, when he remembered the laughing girl who would sing to him in the tower.

Finally Arya looked up. Her eyes were not red, as he'd thought they'd be, she looked as dead calm as he'd ever seen her. "Joffrey. Cersei. Ilyn Payne. The Hound. Ser Gregor. Theon Greyjoy." In her eyes he saw that she was beyond hate and fear and grief. "I'll kill them all."

* * *

_"He's killed too many men to fear them now. Jeyne's anxious around him, and he terrifies her mother."_

* * *

"I will go north."

The redwood table around which they sat, scarred and gouged as it was, was round so that no man might think himself above another. Robb had not seen the likes of such before, not in a council chamber at any rate. _A goodly idea though,_ he thought, _perhaps the Lothstons were not as mad as they seemed._ All sat in chairs of the same height and make, even himself, though he wore his crown. _I should have another such table made, to sit in my council chamber. Wherever that be._

His mother and the Blackfish had come, and all his northern lords. The southroners and Lady Olenna would be received later. "It was folly ever to leave," he said. "The north is from where we draw our strength." Lord Karstark nodded in approval. _A boy's pride and folly that killed my brothers._ He should have listened to his mother - she had warned him, had she not, of Theon. Well he was a boy no more.

"The Tyrells will mislike that," Roose Bolton said, in his soft, slippery voice.

"Let them," he said boldly, "they'd like to plant their turncloak arses on the Iron Throne. If they can win it, they are welcome to it. But my place is at Winterfell."

"Might I make a suggestion, Your Grace?" Bolton again.

"Do so."

"We have no news yet of King's Landing and what has befallen it," he said. "Whether Stannis or the boy king holds it. That might make all the difference."

"How so?" Robb could not see it. "Let them squabble amongst themselves. We will have no part in the southroners' quarrels."

The Blackfish frowned. "What were the terms of your alliance with the Tyrells?"

"It was brokered at Bitterbridge betwixt my lady mother and Olenna Tyrell," Robb said, throwing his mother a glance.

She met it squarely and said, "A marriage between my son and Margaery Tyrell. The Tyrells of the Reach and their bannermen to recognize King Robb as their liege lord and render him all leal service, in exchange for his protection and that they might call upon His Grace's assistance in times of war or need." She looked unhappy at that but shouldered bravely on, "I make no apologies for what I did. I thought it the best way to preserve our unity and strengthen our flagging forces. We _needed_ alliances, that was why I was sent to Renly in the first pl-" A clamor broke out among the more independently-minded men who had never seen any need for southron alliances.

" _Flagging_?" Robb felt like shaking her, mother or not.

"Peace," the Blackfish said wearily. "You did as you thought right, Cat. And I still think you did right, no matter what others might say." His glance passed over Karstark and Robb and several of the other northerners. "A man can win a battle but no man standing singly can win a war. We'd have been picked off like sheaves of wheat by a scythe."

"So you propose that we stay and wait here, Ser? While Winterfell burns and my brothers' heads rot on spikes?"

"I did not suggest that," the Blackfish said, his mildness only serving to enrage Robb further. "Winterfell must be seen to, but the Tyrells _will_ have their due. When you kill a snake, you do not scorch it lest it come back to bite you. You cut its head right off." It took Robb a moment to realize he was not speaking about the Tyrells but about the situation in King's Landing. _And what does that say of my trust in my lady wife's kin?_ His lady wife was a whore, a lying, traitorous whore just as his mother had predicted. And her family was worse. "Stannis will not stop until he either kills you or you bend the knee to him."

"The man is like iron," the Greatjon agreed. "He will break before he yields and so will our king."

"And there is ill blood between Your Grace and Joffrey the Bastard," Robett Glover said.

 _A blood feud,_ Robb thought wearily. _Wasn't that the reason I kept marching, after Father died?_ A good son was expected to avenge his father, especially in the north where such things mattered. _Wasn't that why my father marched south after his father died?_ "I will never be safe on my throne so long as I hunker in the north, is that what you mean to say?"

The Blackfish nodded tersely. "Just so, Your Grace."

His mother spoke up. "Your lord father would say that the lone wolf dies but the pack survives. Robb, listen to his words, I pray you. Your sister Sansa-"

Robb shifted in his seat. "I cannot allow the assault on Winterfell to go unpunished. If I do not turn back now, soon I will have nothing left to turn back on." The assault. He almost laughed at the words - what a small word to encompass all that had transpired.

"Your Grace must indeed take measures," Galbart Glover agreed. "But your army is vast in numbers - you command the North, the Reach and the Riverlands."

"In name," Robb said sourly. "There are many who are still waiting on the wind to bring them news of richer pickings. There are many who still call me the boy usurper and laugh in their cups behind my back."

"Never, Your Grace!" Robett insisted, rising to his feet and resting his hand menacingly on his pommel. "You are the Young Wolf." He looked ready to say more but a glare from his brother sent him sinking back to his chair.

"You might choose to divide your army," the Blackfish suggested, "part to go north and the rest to join with Mace Tyrell and march on King's Landing. Whoever the victors, they will be weakened by the siege or the battle."

"The Redwynes command the largest fleet in the Seven Kingdoms," his mother spoke up. "Greater by far than that of the Iron Islands. Since they are pledged to us, we might use that to our advantage."

He had not thought of that but it did make sense. "Wise words, uncle and mother," Robb agreed. "But who do you propose I should join?"

"That must be your own choice, Your Grace," the Blackfish said, bowing his head, "You will know best what to do."

And that was the sticking point, was it not? To go back or forwards. He rose and the company rose with him. "I thank you, lords and sers, for your valuable council. We will meet again after we dine, and this time with the Tyrells. No doubt they will have much and more to say."

"Robb," his mother said as he walked out but he shook his head and left her behind. He had not spoken to her privately since the news, nor to Arya... _If I look back I am lost,_ he thought. If he stopped to think or remember, he would weep and unman himself. He was a king, wasn't he? Crowned and throned by his own hand. He had to be as hard as the iron spikes on his crown. _Men call Stannis hard,_ he thought, _yet they fear_ _and respect him as well._ Was that such a bad thing? And if they did not love him... well, love was the cruelest poison of all, he had seen.

 _You must be the one to guard your heart. You must armor yourself against the evils of men and women._ His mother had never spoken more truly.

Margaery was waiting in their solar when he entered. As man and wife, they would share a chamber - for now at least. She smelt as though she had just risen from a bath, of flowers and spices. Her curling hair, which she was brushing out, was damp. "Your Grace," she said, curtseying. She was sweet to look upon, in a loose pink gown with little white roses on the bodice, but he knew her for what she was. She had lied to his face when he had opened himself up to her, when he had begged her for the truth. She had not come to his bed a maid.

 _No maid could pleasure a man so easily,_ he thought resentfully, _so naturally, as though she was trained in a brothel from birth._ She had cried out when he entered her, but she had not been in such pain that they could not continue, as he was told virgins were. And most damningly, she had not bled.

"Would Your Grace like something to eat?" she asked tentatively. "Or drink? You must be weary after the council meeting."

"Wouldn't you like to know all about it," he said shortly, setting his crown down.

"My lord?"

"Put on your cloak," he told her, turning his back. "We're going to the kennels."

Grey Wind had been chained down there and it was there he took his sweet young bride. He was eating when they entered the special cell that had been reserved all for the direwolves. Nymeria was chained there at night as well but during the day, Arya ran free with her. Bloody chunks of meat were scattered over the stone, it was gory thing to see, he had to give it that. Margaery flinched and lifted her gown high over her ankles.

"He might get bigger," Robb told her. "North of the Wall, they can grow to the size of a horse, I'm told." He crossed the cell and knelt, scratching Grey Wind behind the ears. His wolf licked his face, leaving a smear of blood on his cheek. He laughed to see the look on his dainty queen's face. "Wouldn't you like to pet him, my lady? He's quite friendly. To those he trusts."

"The same could be said of you, my lord." She hesitated at the threshold, arms wrapped tight around herself.

"Is it your gown you're worried about? I'll buy you a new one to replace it, in the finest lambswool that can be had north of the Neck. Come, Margaery, your king commands you."

"It is not my gown I fear for, but my life," she said sweetly.

"Grey Wind has never yet killed a loyal subject," Robb said. "Are you not loyal, my lady wife?"

"There's always a first time for everything," Margaery muttered but nevertheless, she did cross the floor with her tiny, mincing steps. She knelt next to Robb, one hand braced on his shoulder. If he had expected fear, he was doomed to be disappointed. Margaery Tyrell's face was ice, her composure rock-hard from years of training, no doubt. "What would it please Your Grace for me to do now?"

"Pet him. Haven't you had dogs before?"

"Lapdogs I could fit into my sleeves," she said shortly. "Hunters from my father's kennels I'd handled since they were pups." Pursing her lips, she put her hand forwards and gingerly touched his neck. The wolf did nothing and for a moment her assurance cracked as though she did not believe her good luck. But then, she put on the same dutifully glazed expression she had worn, and began to stroke him with long, firm strokes. Grey Wind stretched as she did so and then surprisingly, rolled on his back like any dog.

"He likes you," Robb said, amused and surprised. "He wants you to do that on his belly."

Margaery let out a nervous, high-pitched little giggle. No doubt she had been holding it in for quite some time. "I will be glad to do so," she said. She threw him an impish smile. "Now what were you saying about a new gown, Your Grace?"

* * *

_I am a thousand winds that blow._   
_I am the diamond glints on snow._   
_Do not stand at my grave and cry;_   
_I am not there. I did not die._

* * *

She had entered Harrenhal on foot, just another orphan scullion, but she left it on horseback, a princess. Mother had put her in a gown of hunter-green, though she had told her that it would only get ruined in the ride. Riverrun was many leagues away, she might as well wear breeches and be comfortable and when they had to enter she could put her gown back on. But she didn't protest too hard - Mother had been so sad and distant of late and she didn't want to hurt her.

"What'll we do at Riverrun?" she had asked her. She did not especially want to go - Robb was to stay at Harrenhal and Gendry was to squire for her grand-uncle, who was going to stay with Robb. Dickon too.

"We wait," her lady mother had said, her face grey in the dawn light as their horses were saddled up. "We wait as women always have waited." Absently, she stroked Nymeria's fur.

"Wait for _what_?" Arya didn't particularly like waiting.

Her mother smiled tiredly as though she could tell what she was thinking. "For a death and a wedding. Your uncle Edmure's to be wed to a Frey and the span of my father's hourglass has all but run out. He should have his daughter with him, his granddaughter too." She cupped Arya's cheek. "Poor little one. Nobody likes waiting."

"Sansa might."

"If she's still alive." Her mother turned her face away.

 _She is,_ Arya felt like screaming. _She is, she is, she is - why do you have to think she's dead?_ Bran and Rickon were gone, would the gods be cruel enough to take Sansa too? _Yes,_ she thought, _that'd be just like t_ _hem. Spiteful and cruel._ Her mother found comfort in the sept and suggested she do so in the godswood, but Arya only went there to work on her sword-play and dream of vengeance. _If I only knew where Jaqen was._ But she hadn't seen him since Lord Tywin had dropped dead at supper.

"Will we ever go back to Winterfell?" They'd told her it was burnt to the ground but she couldn't believe it. Robb had sent half his army north and she had wondered why he hadn't gone as well, to lead them. When she'd asked him, he'd only sighed and said it was too hard to explain. As though she was a little baby. That made her angry but she couldn't punch him to make him tell, not when he looked so sad and tired all the time. It would be too mean.

"You will, child. I never can."

"Why not?"

Her mother pulled her close, wrapping her cloak around the both of them. "Ah Arya, let me be happy with the memories. They are all I have left. One day perhaps you will ride back to Winterfell on a white stallion, your prince at your side, but it holds only ghosts and grief for me."

"Is Elmer Frey the prince?" She'd never met him but she didn't like the sound of him at all. Everyone knew the Freys were chinless timeservers and bred like rabbits in a hutch.

"Mayhap. Mayhap not." Her mother kissed her hair. "You are so young, my Arya. You have all your life ahead of you. And who knows," she said, with a trace of a smile, "perhaps you will be your own prince, as your mother never was. You remind me so much of myself, when I was young, did you know?"

That startled her. "I don't look-"

Her mother put her hand over Arya's heart. "Looks are only gilding. You are strong-willed and full of your own convictions - as I was. That brought me to grief with my sister when we were children. But you are better than me, braver and fiercer and more sure of yourself. I never was." Footsteps sounded down the stairs and Margaery entered the covered courtyard, in her pewter gown.

"Lady Catelyn, Arya," she said softly, "you are ready?" She had no fear of either the wolves, she had even grown companionable with Grey Wind, sitting in the solar of an evening with a book or her harp, with the wolf curled up at her feet. Nymeria, more sensibly, was less fond of her. But nevertheless, she suffered Margaery to pet her lightly before growling a warning.

"Yes, Your Grace."

Margaery winced at that, taking her well-tended hands off Nymeria. "Its Margaery, my lady mother. As it always has been." She looked to the grey skies. "It is an ill day for traveling."

"As fair as any for us," her mother said equably. "There are many leagues between here and Riverrun. I am anxious to reach as soon as possible."

"Of course, I understand," Margaery said quickly. "I will burn candles for Lord Tully's safe recovery."

"Better light them at the Stranger's altar, child, to ease his passage. My father will not recover." Her mother studied Margaery coolly. "I bear you no ill will, Margaery, no matter what you might think of me. Truly." There was something between them that Arya could not understand, a charged tension. "I pray that you bear a child soon, I will burn a candler's stock to the Mother for that. My son has need of heirs."

"Princess Arya is his heir."

Arya looked up, eyes wide. She hadn't given it a thought but it made sense now that Margaery mentioned it. With Bran and Rickon dead and no word of Sansa...

"She is," her mother acknowledged, resting her hand on Arya's head. "But an alliance was sealed between the Starks of Winterfell and the Tyrells of Highgarden in the hope that a child of their shared blood might sit and rule someday."

"Sit where?" Margaery asked pointedly.

"The only chair ever worth sitting on, as men insist," her mother said wryly. She tried to smile but it looked like a grimace. "As men have died for. The Iron Throne."

* * *

_"The free folk fear skinchangers, but they honor us as well. South of the Wall, the kneelers hunt us down and butcher us like pigs."_

* * *

Alerie pressed her hands gently over Leonette's belly. "A baby," she said, smiling through her tears. Tears had always come easily to Alerie's eyes, whether in times of sorrow or times of joy. That was only one of the reasons her good-mother despised her. "How happy I am for you two." She brushed them away with her palm and kissed Leonette's cheeks. "I will start on a new altar-cloth for the Mother at once."

"It is early days yet," Leonette, ever pragmatic, murmured. But nothing, not even her enforced caution, could quench the radiance in her face. "We should not start on anything before the quickening."

"Old wives' tales," Alerie dismissed it. "Come child, let me rejoice in my first grandchild." She made a wry face. "For sure my good-mother would not, if she were here. She would be all doom and gloom." She rapped Leonette's nose. "Mind you don't take after her." Their first grandchild... that should please Mace. He had been grumbling about "wasting" Garlan on a Fossoway ever since Margaery had wed Renly. Oh he was all talk, but Leonette must have heard. It had been a good match when they were betrothed in childhood, and Garlan and Leonette had come to love each other when he was fostered at Cider Hall. But Mace had ambitions, wild, reckless ambitions if Alerie was honest with herself.

Alerie made her sit down at the window-seat and poured her honeyed tea with her own hands. Little Megga played the high harp for them and it all felt so restful and peaceful that she could almost forget the storm brewing outside her boudoir. To be sure she would have to return soon, who else could oversee the packing but the castle's chatelaine, but for now she was content to sit awhile with her good-daughter.

"You shall not stir from here," Alerie said, waggling her finger. "You must rest and read and eat good things - oh and order Garlan about like a slave."

"I should help you," Leonette protested, "you can hardly manage on your own."

"It is an expectant mother's privilege to laze like a cat in the sun," Alerie said, laughing. "My good-mother always made much of me when I was with child and if _she_ could do it, I shall do no less for you." She looked at her thoughtfully. "Perhaps it would go poorly if you were to travel with the rest of us? The road to Harrenhal is long and hard. Perhaps a quiet spell at Cider Hall with your mother-"

"No, no," Leonette said, pushing herself off her cushions, "I will be good, I promise. Only let me go with you." She laughed as she said it, clasping her hands together like a little girl asking for a sweet.

"What did Garlan say when you told him?"

"Swept me off my feet," Leonette said, her eyes dancing, "and then swept me into bed." Megga's nimble fingers missed a chord and she gave a little gasp.

"Leonette! Not in front of the child!" Alerie could feel her cheeks burning but then she had to admit, "Well he is his father's son in that at least." She plumped the cushions behind Leonette's back. "Perhaps you are right to go with us. It can do no harm if the child were to be born at Harrenhal, which will soon be his father's seat."

"So Garlan is to be given Harrenhal?" Leonette's eyes narrowed and she began to toy with her garnet ring. "By Robb Stark, is it?"

"By his grandmother, rather say," Alerie admitted. "But yes, by Robb Stark's seal. Shella Whent is dead and her next of kin is obscure. It might pass, with contention, to a dozen clamorous claimants. Why not Garlan? The Starks have much to appease us for." Alerie grimaced as she remembered the news of Margaery's wedding. _No, I will not think of that,_ she decided. _It is done._ There were men and women enough to take insult and umbrage, to rail and rant and scheme. That had never suited her - hers was the role of a peacemaker, a taste-setter, a gentle chatelaine. _Let others tear themselves to pieces._

Leonette shifted uneasily. "It is said to be cursed."

"Old wives' tales again. Come Leonette, I thought you were more sensible than that."

"Well," the girl said practically, "even if it is not, the price of maintaining it will call a curse down upon our heads."

"That will be my husband's curse then, not yours. Mace means to see Garlan splendidly outfitted and attended when he takes Harrenhal as his seat. The seat of kings, it was called - you know how that will appeal to him."

"I would sooner have Castle Darry than Harrenhal," Leonette said bluntly. "That too has been extinguished in the male line and taken by the northmen."

"Has it?" Alerie did not trouble herself much with such details - that was for the men. And women like her good-mother. "Oh well, it's such a small place I think. Why should you have it when you can have Harrenhal?"

"Small and safe." Leonette rested her hand on her belly. "I fear I will never see Garlan again if we become Lord and Lady of Harrenhal. We will lose ourselves in the castle." But she smiled as she said it and Alerie decided to take it for a jape.

"I will stay with you till after your lying-in," Alerie assured her. "Margaery as well, for as long as she remains there. The Stark women have left for the Riverlands, and I expect Robb Stark will not take her with him when he marches on King's Landing. Mayhap I will have two grandchildren, born within a few moons of each other." _And one a prince, gods be good._

"What of Willas?" Leonette asked. "Is he to wed a Frey after all?"

"Oh there's many a slip betwixt the cup and the lip," Alerie said airily, "I wouldn't worry about that if I were you - Mace told me it would all sort itself out. Even if he does, she might not breed and even if she breeds she might die or lose the babe in the bloody bed. Willas is young enough to take more brides."

Leonette looked at her askance. "Did Lady Olenna write to you?"

"She might have," Alerie admitted. "Lord Frey has sent his daughters and granddaughters to Riverrun, so that Ser Edmure and Lady Stark might make their choice amongst the likely ones as brides, fosterlings and ladies-in-waiting. The rest will be sent to Harrenhal, to serve Margaery."

"Poor Margaery, knee deep in Freys. How goes her marriage?"

Alerie had had only one letter from her daughter since the wedding. "She writes to me dutifully," she had to admit, "Margaery was ever cautious about putting words to ink. I hardly know." She chewed nervously at her bottom lip. She would not think about this, she would _not_. "No doubt she is very happy in her marriage, just as you and Garlan are. How could she not be? They are of an age and if he takes after the Tullys, as he is said to, he cannot be uncomely. And a king besides, no, I am quite certain that Margaery is very happy. _Quite_."

"A king they call a skinchanger," Leonette said softly, "a king who has a taste for blood."

"All kings have a taste for blood, all men too when the warlust is on them. And they spread the filthiest rumors about everyone," Alerie said, "I am surprised at you for listening, Leonette. If he _were_ a skinchanger he would have to be a sorcerer and if he were a sorcerer, why has he not yet won the war with his sorcery?"

"They say Stannis Baratheon has a red sorceress," Leonette persisted, undeterred by Alerie's frown of warning. "Some Eastern whore who laid King Renly low with her blood magic. And he is still fighting for a throne." Leonette ran her fingers through her hair. "And does it not strike you as passing strange how quickly and easily King Robb won most of his battles? A green boy of fifteen-"

"No, it does not," Alerie said, rising quickly. "He had good councilors to give him sage advice. He had a wise father to teach him. He is great by himself. There was no sorcery involved, none."

"Except the wolf that rides with him into battle. When direwolves have not been seen south of the Wall for-"

"You should rest," Alerie said abruptly. "These are foolish fancies, good-daughter, and not meet for your condition. You should rest and remember that Margaery, my daughter and your good-sister, is Robb Stark's queen." _He cannot be a sorcerer. He cannot._ "And now I bid you good day. I must attend to the baggage."

* * *

 _"It was mine." Jeyne sobbed. "You had no right. Robb had it made for me. I_ loved _him." Her mother made to slap her, but Jaime stepped between them._

* * *

 

She had never seen a man swing from the gibbet before. Her mother would not have let her. Today though, Lady Sybell kept an iron grip on her daughter's arm while the gusts in the courtyard caused their dark cloaks to flap out. _Like raven's wings,_ Jeyne thought, wanting nothing so much as to turn her face away, to flee up the stairs and fall into her bed, with the door latched firm behind her. _Dark wings, dark words._

"Look," her mother said, digging her nails more sharply into her arm, "look at what you have done."

 _I never did,_ Jeyne thought but it was a shriveling little lie. Stout Gerton had been the one to hold the man still, Ulwer to slip the noose around his neck but his death lay at her door. _Gentle Mother, I never meant to._ The man's face was black as tar, he was dead or near enough to make no matter for his body had stopped its twisting and twitching. It cast a long black shadow on the cobblestones in the courtyard. The skies above them were iron-colored, the pale sun swathed under thunder-clouds. The gods would hear her - surely they would know what had been in her heart? _I bound his wound, I healed him. How could I give him up to his killers?_

He was a long time dying, it seemed, but finally Ulwer gave the nod to mother. Still holding on to Jeyne's arm, she dragged her from the courtyard and up the stairs to her solar. Raynald and Uncle Rolph were waiting for them. With a shove that sent her to her knees, her mother left her and took a chair.

"Why Jeyne, why?" It was Uncle Rolph, his voice so sad that she could almost cry. "Why would you do such a thing?"

"I am so sorry, uncle," she said and she was. She wished she had never seen Robb Stark, that he had never come to their door in the dark of night. "But," she said, her voice cracking, "I could do no less, if I was given another chance."

"That you never shall be," her mother promised but Uncle Rolph held up his hand to forestall her.

"Peace, Sybell," he said wearily, "done is done. Jeyne has always had the healer's instinct."

"What she has," her mother snapped, "is a maiden's soft, lovesick heart. I should have kept her close under lock and key until she was married off, as they do across the Narrow Sea." She was not far wrong in that, Jeyne thought. But nor her was uncle. _There is never one answer_ _alone that will suffice, mother,_ she thought, _how many times must I t_ _ell you that?_

Raynald spoke up. "The men had little liking for Emery Hill, he was new to the guard and had few friends, but questions _will_ be asked. To be sure Gerton and Ulwer are loyal and true and will do all they can to quench the rumors, but still... do you understand, Jeyne?"

Meekly, she nodded. "He could have run off," she suggested, "new men often do, lured by better prospects."

"That is what we will say," her uncle agreed. "But you understand the position we are in."

"The position you put us in," her mother snapped. "No, brother, I will _not_ be hushed. You are too soft by far on the traitorous little sow." She grabbed the front of Jeyne's gown and putting her face close to hers hissed, "A hangman's noose might still a single whisper, but if one man saw you there must have been others. We are lucky he was blinded by his love of gold and came to us first. Others might be more wary, seeing as what happened to him. And wary is not to our benefit." She let her go and Jeyne sank back into the carpet, still on her knees.

Her mother rose and began to pace. "Do you know, Jeyne, that carpet was part of my dowry. My father brought it all the way from Myr on one of his voyages. It was a long one, we had not seen him in three years - do you remember, Rolph? - and when he came back he brought with him bolts of royal purple and Myrish lace, a bronze mirror as tall as a man, a tiger's skin from Yi tI, tuns of Pentoshi ambers and green nectars from Qarth and chests of saffron, silks and spices. All this to marry off one daughter to a petty lordling." Her lips curved into a disdainful smile. "Yes Raynald, a petty lordling who squandered it all away because he was a proud fool. Just like his stupid daughter. What's left of all his bounty now? A carpet." Viciously, she kicked at a corner of it.

"We are going east," her mother said bitterly, "to start afresh, if we can."

"The Lannisters might never find out-" Jeyne said feebly. _Kevan Lannister is not his brother. And they have their own wars to win._

Her mother snorted. "I won't take that chance with my neck, thank you. You are welcome to, if you wish. As your brother means to."

Raynald stood up, his hand on his sword-hilt. He meant to look proud and brave, but it was hard to take him seriously. _He's still a frightened boy, no matter how fierce he tries to be._ "The Westerlings have held the Crag longer than the old Casterlys held the Rock," he insisted, "as my lord father's heir, it is my duty to stay."

"I am sure Gawen will be delighted in his fine son," his mother said, scorn dripping from her voice like honey off a comb. "You will soon be reunited with him, as Robb Stark's magnanimous letter informs us. In that I rejoice, that I will never have to see his sorry face again. Yes, Jeyne," she said sourly, "your pretty king is sending him home with a northern escort. If _that_ doesn't make the Lannisters sit up and take heed, I don't know what will."

"Where are you going?"

"To my grandfather's kin in the Free Cities," her mother said shortly. "With begging bowls thrust out. They are prosperous, no doubt they will suffer us to stay on as handmaids or seamstresses in their manses. A mean life, but better by far than rotting on a spike."

"Your mother means to take the fall for you," her uncle told her. "She will claim that she healed him and freed him, because-"

"-because I'm a witch's get," her mother said. "They won't look past that. Everyone knows about my grandmother, they'll be only too happy to decide that bad blood will out in the end. Rolph and Eleyna will come with me."

"Shall I stay here?" Jeyne asked. It might not be so bad to stay with Raynald, and Father when he came back.

Her mother shot her a malevolent glare. "Still thinking about saving your skin, daughter? I expected no better."

"Pity the girl, Sybell, she wasn't-"

"If I must take the fall for you," her mother said softly, "if I must live every day for the rest of my life under the shadow of my sword, then I mean to see that you shall suffer as well. No Jeyne, you will _not_ stay here. You will leave."

She felt as though her heart would tumble out from her chest. "Lady mother, I beg you-" She reached out blindly for her.

Her mother drew her skirts back from her. "You are no daughter of mine. Go where you will, with the men your brother gives you - north or south, east or west, it makes no matter to me. Find your precious king and bear him bastards for love. Find a brothel that will have you. Or find yourself a ditch to die in."

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Why doesn't Robb think Margaery is a virgin? Well first of all, even in the books she's ruptured her hymen - probably from horseback riding. Second of all, it didn't hurt her because of her previous horse-riding experiences, except for a tiny pinch. Thirdly, Robb expected her to be as innocent and unexperienced as his sisters to qualify as "a maid", it never occurred to him that girls could experiment just like boys. And plenty of noble girls, both in reality as well as in GRRM's canon, have "dallied" to the point of making out and heavy petting with squires and stable-boys. So Margaery has some experience and a lot of imagination, both of which are damning for someone like Robb.
> 
> Also, why the abrupt shift in Catelyn's advice now? Well she still doesn't really want war or the Iron Throne in particular but she wants vengeance now that Bran and Rickon are dead, she wants the wound cauterized. As for the Iron Throne, she's realized that the only way for Robb to be safe is if he is King of all the Seven Kingdoms, just like Robert was in his day.


	8. The Queen and the Squire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> POVs - Loras Tyrell, Margaery Stark, Gendry Waters.

_But the ghosts that we knew will flicker from view_

* * *

Loras Tyrell stood with his arm around his sister's shoulders and watched the northmen stream through the castle gates, a river of sun-burnished steel. From the top of Widow's Tower, he could see the country all around Harrenhal - the God's Eye in green and blue, the patchwork of burned brown and mottled yellow fields and the dark, firred edges of the woods clinging to them. Men in iron had walked over the land and raped it, that was plain to see.

Margaery tugged at his arm and pointed out the sunburst of Karstark to him. The Lord of Karhold would lead the northmen and Riverlanders who were being sent to retake Winterfell. "A good thing Robb's sending him back," she declared. "His place will never be in the south. Would that he sent the Umbers with him."

 _His heart is in his sons' graves,_ Loras thought but did not say. "He still needs men he knows to be loyal to him, at his back," he pointed out reasonably. "He hardly trusts ours."

"I know." Margaery fluttered her fingers dismissively. "But they are wearisome. So uncouth. Bolton then," she said, "he should have sent Bolton back. He _would_ have, I think, but then Lady Stark warned him against it. And after what happened with Theon Turncloak and him not listening to her..." she trailed off, shaking her head.

"I wouldn't trust Bolton as far as I could throw him," Loras said. "One look - he's as bad as Tywin Lannister. Or worse. At least Lord Tywin looks like a man - you'd not know Bolton from a maggot turfed from a fresh grave."

"He told me he's looking for a bride, to give him heirs other than his bastard," she said, with a grimace. "Poor girl, whoever she is. I wouldn't even wish him on one of our little Freys."

Margaery's new Frey handmaidens had most graciously been granted permission to disport themselves as they would in the courtyard - handing out ribbons and favors and kisses to the northmen who were leaving. _And pity fucks_ , Margaery had said with grimace, _I swear I'll never take Ami Frey as a bedmate - I'd catch the pox for sure._

"Gendry!" his sister said suddenly, her voice brighter than he had heard since before her wedding.

At the sight of Robert Baratheon's bastard, Loras' heart twisted, as it always did. The gods were cruel to bring back Renly's ghost in the form of a sulky, ungainly blacksmith's boy to torment him. Sometimes he wondered savagely how Margaery, who had claimed to love Renly so, could stand to be near him. She always seemed to have him at her beck and call, flirting and toying with him as she would a favored pet. For his part, he tried his best to avoid the boy. The castle was huge and so far he had succeeded in never speaking to him since the day Margaery had first found him in the forges, when he had had to question him about his name and whereabouts.

"Your Grace." The smith's apprentice sketched an awkward had all of Renly's beauty and none of Renly's grace - and that made Loras hate him all the more savagely. "Ser Loras."

"Blue," his sister said idly, brushing her fingers against his shoulder. A blacksmith's broad shoulders - the lad was younger than Loras but taller, more muscled and wider in the chest. A spark of interest flared in her eyes and Loras sighed to himself. "Blue becomes you."

"Thank you, Your Grace." Gendry Waters blushed fiercely and Loras was reminded once again of the squires and stable-boys that Margaery and her cousins would keep on a run - teasing and toying with and tormenting for hours and days for no reason save that it pleased them. Stolen kisses in high-walled gardens and haystacks and then, when they had finished with a new swain and he had ceased to amuse, the icy smiles of indifference. Lucky for him that he had never liked girls.

"I chose that tunic for you, you know," she said lightly, "the one you wore at my wedding feast, and at the breakfast after."

His blue eyes opened very wide at that and he stumbled over his thanks this time. Clearly it had meant something to him and Margaery ruthlessly seized on it. "I wanted you to look dashing," she murmured as though the words were secrets meant only for him, her brown eyes meltingly soft. "I-"

Loras coughed and not discreetly. "Shouldn't you be at your duties now?" he asked pointedly. "When I was a squire I never had time to loiter where I wasn't needed."

"Really Loras," Margaery said sharply. She pouted endearingly but the damage was done.

Gendry's eyes darkened and he stepped back. "I beg pardon," he said awkwardly, "I won't be in your way again, Ser, Your Grace." When he had left, Margaery turned fiercely on him, her ears and cheeks pink - whether from lust or embarrassment he could not say.

"What did you have to do _that_ for?"

Loras picked up her hand and stroked the ring on her heart-finger.

"I was only playing," she said sulkily, pulling her hand back. "Better an apprentice boy than anyone else. He's too delicious for words, Loras, and he makes me laugh."

"Be serious for once," he snapped. He was in no mood to humor his little sister, not now when she was acting like a spoiled child. _She did it to hurt me,_ he decided, _dangling the boy in my face._ His sweet, sharp tart of a sister. "You have a husband."

"A husband," she repeated, resting her elbows on the stone walls. She gave a shaky little laugh. "A brave young husband to sire strong sons on me. Oh yes. How could I _ever_ forget?"

* * *

_"But men enjoy it," Lily suggested._

_"A lady is not a man," Muriel said stiffly. "A man gets pleasure from it and the lady's pleasure is in giving in to him. It is how children are conceived and those are true joys of marriage."_

**\- Fallen Skies  
**

* * *

_A wife's pleasure is like chaff in the wind,_ Taena of Myr had once said. _A trivial thing._

Once she had let slip the words, they could not be unsaid. All the women in the bower had echoed her eagerly - the only women a man cared to service were those he deemed without virtue. Lovers and favored whores. They spoke of joy in the marriage bed as they would of sweet savories, something rare and desirable but not to be expected. The best that most could hope for was simply being bored while their husbands writhed and panted above them. There were worse things, they all agreed.

By then Margaery had been deemed old enough to take part in the conversation, her flowering long past her and a betrothal gleaming on her horizon. "But you are so handsome," she had told Lady Taena incredulously. _Desirable,_ she had meant. "Surely Lord Orton must cherish you and desire your pleasure above all things."

"So you would think, my little lady," the Myrish woman had said with a easy smile. And then leaned over to whisper thrillingly in Margaery's ear, "But I have not been thoroughly pleasured since I was a whore."

Before her own mother had sent her to Renly's bed, she had delicately brought up the children that would be a consolation, in time. The reward and price of a wife's duties.

"Screaming, sniveling brats?" her grandmother had snorted when she heard. "Oh don't pussyfoot and fill the girl's head with silly fancies, Alerie. Children are curses. _Lovers_ are consolations. They knock ten years off a woman's age, Margaery. Not," she'd added acidly, with a glance at her good-daughter, "that you look as if you've ever had any, Alerie."

 _Someday I will have a lover,_ she mused dreamily, _tall and strong and dark, with arms like iron and eyes like the sea._

As Robb pounded away dutifully inside her, she moaned and sighed under him like a woman in the throes of passion. That was what all men wanted, wasn't it? She bit back a yelp of pain as his fingers clenched on her shoulders and his body stiffened over hers. _At least he is quick to the finish._ Lady Taena had said all young bucks were. Margaery only wondered why she had said it with a grimace of distaste - there were few moments she savored more these days then those after their coupling ended, relieved that she had done her night's duty. It had ceased to hurt, after the first few times. _And when he shivers and softens, that is your moment to strike. Ask him for those garnets you've always wanted._

"My love," she crooned, wrapping her arms and legs tighter around him. "Ahhhh... my _king_." He sagged into her, burying his face in her shoulder. If he whispered a name, the words were muffled against her warm skin, too low to be heard.

 _Who is Jeyne?_ she wondered, once again. _Some serving maid he dallied with in Winterfell? A camp slut in the Riverlands, riding the wains at the back of the army? Some tavern wench in the west? Who is Jeyne?_ He had only screamed her name once. Once had been more than enough.

She squirmed under his weight and remembering himself, he rolled off her. Margaery leaned up on one elbow, drawing the satin coverlets over his hips and her breasts. She studied his face by the moonlight that bathed the room. Soft and vulnerable and young. Eyes shut, lips parted as though in wonder. Still not in his full senses. _I could kill you now,_ she thought dispassionately, _men call them_ _selves the strong ones but they all have their weak moments._ Small wonder that she would ever be the kind of wife Catelyn Stark would prefer for her son. Idly, she brushed the matted copper curls over his damp forehead.

"Did I please you, my lord?" she asked coyly. That he had left her frustrated and unsatisfied was something she knew well enough never to tell him. _Would it even matter?_ she thought. _Perhaps he would give me one of those glassy looks of his again. He does them so well._

"More than I can say, Margaery." His breathing had begun to slow already. With an effort, he opened his eyes and smiled faintly at her. "Thank you."

 _What an awkward thing to say,_ she thought. Only the kind of thing an awkward young husband would think to say. If there had been love or even affection to soften duty, he might not have. "Sleep now, my sweet," she whispered, kissing him lightly. His forehead, the tip of his nose and the points of his high cheekbones. Lips. A comely face, rather pleasant to kiss. By the time she was done, he was asleep. She rose and padded away to the privy to finish that which he had started.

After she had satisfied herself, she anointed herself with elderflower scent from a glass vial and wrapped herself in a swansdown robe laid over the coffer. _There are worse things than to lie under a king,_ she reminded herself as she looked out of the window. Harrenhal frosted in the moonlight, a sleeping behemoth. _You thought it would be worse when you were told you would be given to the Young Wolf._ _Some men like to hear their women scream._ King or no king, Loras would have lopped his head off for that. He would have faced a screaming horde of northern berserkers for her. Robb might be coolly courteous and have little use for her outside their bed at night, but he was not unkind. Indifferent, maybe. Austere, yes.

_His kisses taste of duty. He closes his eyes so he can pretend that I am his Jeyne._

The pounding on the door roused her from her thoughts with a start. "A moment!" she shouted, "just a moment!" She began to shake Robb awake, glad that he had a soldier's training. It took barely a few shoves before he was rubbing at his eyes and sitting up. "Robb. _Robb_."

Bleary but definitely awake, he let her fasten the ties of his breeches while he shrugged into a shirt. "Enter," he finally said, tossing on his mantle.

It was Maester Gwydion, as she had expected. There would be no cause to rouse the king at such an hour, save for news of the gravest import. "For Your Grace's eyes alone," he said and with no preamble or flourish, handed over the sealed letter. "I have not seen its contents, save that it is from Lord Tyrell on the rose road. I deemed it best that Your Grace should see it first."

"You are wise, Maester Gwydion," she said, grateful that he was her grandmother's creature.

Robb ripped the seal off and after scanning a few lines said curtly, "King's Landing has fallen. Summon the lords to my solar at once - the Blackfish, Karstark, the Greatjon." He glanced at Margaery and added, "Lady Olenna. Tarly. Ser Loras."

Bowing hastily, Maester Gwydion left, his grey robes flapping about his ankles. "To who?" Margaery demanded, tightening the sashes that held her robe in place. This was the news they had all been waiting for.

"Stannis. Here," he said, tossing her the letter and putting on his boots. "He cracked an empty shell though. No trace of the Lannisters anywhere - not the Queen, her bastards or the Imp. Or their piss-poor excuse for a Kingsguard."

"How could Ser Kevan have ever reached them in time?" Margaery demanded, mystified.

The letter was from her father's maester. Highgarden, which had been lying in wait on the rose road like a cat at the mouse's hole, had sprung into action at once. Even without the Lannisters, the battle for the city had raged fiercely - wildfire had been unleashed on Blackwater Bay, the letter said, and the toll in men and ships had been something terrible. Even Stannis' smuggler was said to be missing - or dead.

"With the devil's own luck, it would seem." He threw back his head and knocked off a cup of wine. "Facts are facts, little as we like them."

"My lord," she said, making a quick decision, "I must be there when you sit in council with your lords and knights. I am your queen." She had expected doubt and dissent if not outright refusal. Perhaps a bidding that she remember her place. A disdainful wave of the hand and a reminder that she was only a girl of fifteen. That was how Lord Tarly would have dealt with her, or even Karstark or the Blackfish. But Robb only threw her a peevish look, as if she was just one more little trouble that had to be taken care of.

"Come then. If you can keep your opinions to yourself," He gave her a hard look, as though she was some busybody gossip who had to be bridled for her own good. Really! "As I intend to do myself."

"Thank you," she said gratefully. _What a man this one is. He blows hot and cold._ "I will not shame you." She was naked under her robe but there was no time to change. She followed him into the solar and began lighting the candles and the fire. While she prepared the room, without servants, he began pacing, muttering under his breath. Scraps of words that made no sense to her, numbers and names of places.

The Blackfish, his quarters closest to theirs, was the first to arrive. Silently, she handed him the letter. His blue eyes gleamed as they read it but then he shrugged and took a seat at the table. "Would that the snake had but one head, so that we could chop it off in one stroke."

"Indeed, ser," she said, smiling at him. "A septon might say the gods send us trials to test us."

"Then I've had more than my fair share," Robb snapped at her. The Blackfish raised his eyebrows at this but said nothing to his grand-nephew's outburst. The others filtered into the room in various states of dress and to each she handed over the letter to be read, gasped at and assessed. By the time Loras had finally arrived, Robb had stopped pacing and taken his rightful seat at the head of the table. Margaery sat to his left, next to her grandmother.

The Blackfish was the first to break the tetchy silence. "Stannis Baratheon cannot hold the city."

Her grandmother inclined her head in agreement. "The numbers are almost equaled between him and my son," she said. "Stout walls and men within are always protection, but not when they have been as badly breached as King's Landing."

"King's Landing has never had any liking for Stannis," Randyll Tarly agreed. "A Targaryen queen once held the capital, as proud as she was false. But the good people of the city slew her dragons and she sailed to her death in Dragonstone in shame and bitterness. Your Grace, you _must_ go and take your crown in King's Landing at once. Let Stannis try to hold the city, if he dares. Or let him scurry to Dragonstone with his tail between his legs."

"Either way it will mean his death," Karstark said with relish.

"Lord Tyrell might take the city on his own," Tarly said and Margaery reminded herself not to smile. Her father would do no such thing. "If he does not-" _cannot_ would have been more suited -"then our numbers, if we make haste, will swell his ranks and gain us the victory." He leaned back in his chair and smiled, eminently satisfied with himself. "If we leave at-"

"Let the king speak," the Greatjon rumbled in warning.

"Of course," Tarly said coolly, plainly displeased at the interruption. With an effort, he straightened his face and said more respectfully, "Your Grace?"

Robb studied him a moment and nodded. He turned to her grandmother and said with the greatest bitterness she had ever heard him voice, "I want the Lannisters hunted down like the vermin they are. I trust you will see to that, my lady?"

"I can have my people look into their whereabouts," her grandmother said cautiously, "if they can be found."

"Pray do so." He rose and they all rose with him. "Let us meet again an hour after dawn to discuss our plans and snatch what sleep we can. I will summon a council of all my good lords and knights." To Margaery's surprise, he took her arm and led her into their room.

"I'll be coming with you?" she asked, cutting to the bone of the matter. "To King's Landing?" As his queen, where else would she be? But he might have taken some fool notion into his head that it was not fitting for a noble wife to follow the army. Northerners could be a little queer in their heads, she had found.

"As soon as it is safe, yes," he said cautiously. He plumped the pillows and lay back looking at her while she wet her throat with a dash of wine. "You and your lady grandmother can follow behind. Slowly."

 _Me and my lady grandmother and your mother followed the army from Bitterbridge to Harrenhal and it was not safe,_ she thought but did not say. _And your little sister lived in Harrenhal under Tywin Lannister and his monsters and_ that _was not safe at all._

She thought he would roll over and sleep but surprisingly, he pulled her to him when she set down her cup. "Give me a son, Margaery," he whispered as he kissed her, his lips tasting of wine and lust.

His hands slid over her body, a soldier's hard hands. She straddled him, knees sinking in the feathered mattress and kissed him back just as fiercely, nibbling at his ears with sharp little teeth, grasping his shoulders and lean, muscled thighs. _N_ _o one could ever deny that he has the Tully beauty._ Some men didn't like a woman riding them - or not their wives at least. _They wouldn't want to share the power, would they?_ Robb did not seem to mind at all.

His breath came out in ragged grasps and he tore open her sash in his eagerness. He traced a trail down her throat and neck and between her breasts with his tongue. Hands hot and insistent on her waist and hips and the hollow between her legs. And this time, for the first time, she was the one twitching and twisting, nails clawing into his shoulders and collarbones and gouging out tiny, crescent-shaped scars on his chest.

" _Robb_."

She lay curled over him, warmth spreading over her body like mulled wine sipped in winter. She could have lay like this forever. He shifted under her, the better to accommodate her weight, and rested his hands delicately over her shoulderblades. His hot breath fanned her ear as he whispered the words.

"Give me a son to sit on the Iron Throne."

* * *

_Harrenhal was vast, much of it far gone in decay. Lady Whent had held the castle as bannerman to House Tully, but she'd used only the lower thirds of two of the five towers, and let the rest go to ruin. Now she was fled, and the small household she'd left could not begin to tend the needs of all the knights, lords and highborn prisoners Lord Tywin had brought._

* * *

"She should have flown out from the belfry," little Shirei piped up. She was the youngest of Lord Walder's trueborn daughters and at six, the only one of his get that Margaery could trust. Her voice had begun to grate though. "She was a bat. She could have."

Arwyn pinched her and hissed, "Her _sigil_ was a bat. Nine bats, Shirei, don't you remember anything?" At fourteen, she was almost a woman grown and Shirei's blood sister.

"But she was a skinchanger. All the Whents were and the Lothstons before them," the child persisted. "Nurse _told_ me."

"Be quiet, both of you," Fat Walda snapped, before Arwyn could open her mouth again. "Her Grace will be wroth if you keep up that racket. We're supposed to be praying."

The Whents were sworn to the Seven and it was to the sept that Margaery had brought her women, to light candles at the Stranger's altars to ease Shella Whent's passage and to pray over her body. _What's left of it anyway,_ she thought darkly. The silent sisters had patched her back together and sewn her in a shroud of silk as befitted her station, but not before Margaery had had a look.

 _I am no squeamish girl,_ she had told them and the maester who would have spared her, _I am the queen and it is meet that I see the fruits of war._ She had kept her queenly dignity but afterwards, she had emptied her stomach in the privy. She had been lucky that there had been no one to see her - else she would have had to contend with rumors of a pregnancy as well.

Lady Whent had, most unfortunately for her, not taken to the skies. A swift steed in the black of night had carried her far away... but not far enough for Tywin Lannister's pets to find her. When they were done with her, she looked more like a bat than a weary old woman. _I'd rather die,_ Margaery thought, stroking her thumb over the hollow stone on her little finger.

Before she had left for Bitterbridge with Renly's army, Lady Taena had taken her aside and offered it to her. "The fortunes of war are ever uncertain," she had said quietly. There had been no trace of her usual lush, teasing smile on her face. "Take this as my gift, Your Grace."

"Yours and Lord Orton's?"

"No," the Myrishwoman had said, with a toss of her long, dark hair. "Mine alone. I know what it is like to be a woman, my queen." And then she had pushed aside the stone with a nail, to reveal the poisoned pellet within.

At last Margaery rose from her knees and the Frey girls behind her took their cue.

"May you sleep sweetly now, my lady," she murmured, leaving her roses on the bier. A sour stench seemed to fill the air and she was glad to leave the sept, her duty done. Those who wished to pay their respects to the last of the Whents might do so at their leisure. The Frey girls slipped out behind her, hand-in-hand like loving sisters. Out of the ten stoats Lord Walder had sent her, two were pretty, one was a child, half wanted to catch a husband and the other half the pox and all made her want to rip their hair out - or hers. But if she could not rule over her maids of honor, how could she ever expect to rule over a kingdom?

 _They ooze scandal and cheap perfume,_ her grandmother had only remarked to her mildly after the girls had first been introduced to them. _Walder would have made a better profit by leashing them to a whorehouse._

"Walda, Roslin," she said pleasantly, "walk with me if you will." These were the ones that needed the most reining in, Margaery thought. The beauties. _Though I should keep an eye out for Gatehouse Ami as well._ A wise mistress would wed them off quickly, have them sent far away where they could never prove to be a temptation. Perhaps she would offer one to the Leech Lord if he mentioned a bride to her once more.

"A sorry business today, my ladies," she sighed, giving each girl an arm. "It distresses me greatly."

Meek and mealy little Roslin bowed her head but Fair Walda spoke up boldly. "Then Your Grace need not have come," she insisted. "Lady Whent was no kin of yours."

"She was my lord husband's bannerwoman. Leal and loyal to the end of her days, she died in his service," Margaery said mildly. "I do not shirk my duties, Lady Walda."

Robb and his army had left three days past, leaving a skeleton force to hold Harrenhal and guard his queen. Their last night together had been... stirring. Unsettling. But she certainly did not miss being at his beck and call every night, and all with a smile on her face and a soft word on her lips. Now she shared her bed with a different handmaid every night as a chaste young bride should. Thus far, Fat Walda with her comforting bulk and endless chitter-chatter had been her favorite.

"We shall all leave for King's Landing once we receive Princess Arya," she told the girls. "Lady Stark will remain in Riverrun to care for Lord Tully, but it is meet that His Grace's heiress join him in the city."

"I've always wanted to see King's Landing," Amerei said eagerly. "Oh the silks and jewels-"

"The Street of Silk would suit you capitally," Fat Walda agreed sweetly and Margaery stifled a laugh behind her fingers.

"Now ladies," she said, with an airy wave. "We ought to be civil." _Better they claw at each other than at me, though,_ she thought. She had no intention of having them form factions with each other. Let the sisters feud with each other to win her favor, let them imagine they had her trust. Her father had never kept a mistress but that was not by dint of her mother's ingenuity. Most men were not so loving. _Certainly not the Young Wolf,_ she thought darkly. _I'll wager he has a roving eye._ Whores were all well and good in their place but a Frey mistress? She would never stand for it.

* * *

_"Fat Walda. My lord of Frey offered me my bride's weight in silver for a dowry, so I chose accordingly."_

* * *

"I hear Lord Frey's ready to dower them in their weight in silver," Hammond told him. He pointed at a fat pink one in a lacy pink dress. All she wanted was an apple in the mouth, Gendry thought. "That's the one _I'd_ pick."

With almost all the able-bodied men gone, only the greenest boys - like Gendry who could scarcely ride _and_ hold a sword -, the weak and the old - like Hammond and Tymon - were left to hold Harrenhal. Ser Loras had stayed behind, much to his chagrin, to command the garrison and escort his grandmother and sister to King's Landing in time. Now it was the women who outnumbered the men. If Gendry had wanted, he could have picked a different one every night. Certainly he had had no shortage of offers.

Tymon snorted. "He'd not go wasting good silver on the likes of you," he said shrewdly, "them as he'd pay the lass's weight in coin for would be lords or heirs or someone like your master, the Blackfish."

"True," Hammond had to admit, somewhat downcast. He shoved Gendry playfully. "Mayhap a king's bastard would do for His Lordship just as well, what d'you think of that? You'd be able to set yourself up quite nice with the silver, buy a farm somewhere nice, breed yourself some sons."

"Stop teasing the lad," Tymon said when Gendry blushed furiously. "He's still a boy and all he has on his mind is cunts now, not children."

"I'd like a wife," Hammond said wistfully. "A fat, rich wife aye. Ah look now, she's got her eye on you." It was undoubtedly true, the fat girl in pink _was_ looking at them - at Gendry in particular, he had to admit, reluctant though he was.

"Like a gimlet," he said, turning away.

Hammond laughed. "Won't help, my lad. If eyes were flaming arrows-"

He stood up. He'd almost finished his meal anyway and he was due to work on his swordplay afterwards. "Good thing they're not. I've no wish to be roasted."

"Every man does!" Hammond shouted after him. "You wait and see when you meet the right girl-"

 _Maybe I already have,_ he mused as he left for the practice yards. For a while, with the men and boys still at table, he had Flowstone Yard mostly to himself. He plucked himself a quarterstaff from a barrel in the corner and began his exercises. Staving came easy to him as it did any gutter-rat who'd grown up in Fleabottom and lived to tell the tale. Sticks were swords in the gutters and most every friend you roughhoused with in the morning could be a foe when you caught yourself a juicy apple or a plump loaf.

At Mott's, he'd tussled some with the other boy's, with true staffs, them with the sharp steel bits at the end. Mott had a rich manse and a fall larder and he meant to keep both, he'd told his apprentices. Hence the staffs, to keep the good people of King's Landing at bay should they choose to come creeping up his hill someday. Sometimes, though rarely, the boys had even goosed around with the hammers and swords they'd been set to forging. When Mott was out of course and Deon and Larse were in a good humor.

"The sword comes natural to you," Hammond had told him when he'd started him on his first drills with a wooden tourney sword, meant for a boy half his age no doubt. "We'll make a proper knight of you yet, smith."

Tymon had scoffed at that, said anyone could see the bull-headed boy was made not for a sword, but a warhammer. "Look at 'em muscles in his arms and shoulders," he'd said, clapping Gendry's shoulders. "I'd wager on you in a melee, I would."

"Let's hope King Robb holds one then," Hammond said brightly. "Tourneys and melees, aye that's a kingly thing to do. King Robert did. So did his brother Renly." _And they bled the realm white,_ Gendry had thought but did not say.

"Lord Stark never did though," Tymon, who was a peg-legged northman, had told him. "More's the pity, I like to see a good fight in good faith as well as any other man. Tis only sport. Like as not King Robb won't either though, unless his southron queen can persuade him otherwise."

 _A warhammer,_ Gendry thought, thinking of the father he'd never known. _And me all in blue mail and scales._ Queen Margaery thought blue became him, she had said so to his face. _Now wouldn't that be a pretty sight?_

As the courtyard filled slowly around him, with the ghost force still left at Harrenhal, he noticed that the queen and her ladies had drawn cushioned chairs under the shade of an awning and were watching. Queen Margaery wore a white gown and fanned herself with a circular fan of swan-feathers. Her crown was of rose-gold and set with colored stones. Ser Loras stood over his sister's chair, whispering in her ear and making her laugh. For the briefest moment, Gendry felt a twinge of jealousy. Once she had laughed when he spoke to her.

He turned resolutely away, highborn women were no concern of his. Let the other fools preen and prance before them - there were plenty of _them_. At first all seemed as it should be, but then a high squeaky voice rang through the yard.

A girl said, very loudly, "I shall wager on the Blackfish's squire!"

And when he turned, he saw the plump pink girl, her eyes locked on him. Queen Margaery laughed. "How much do you mean to wager, Lady Walda?"

 _Walda Frey,_ Gendry noted her name down for later. He could feel his face burning and all he wanted to do was run away, but the queen was beckoning to him and there'd be Tyrell steel at his throat if he turned his back on the flower of Highgarden. Sulkily, feeling like nothing so much as a lapdog with its chain tugged, he went to her. "Your Grace, how may I be of service?" Those were the words she'd put into his mouth and trained him to use, fancy, highborn words that knights were supposed to use to ladies and queens.

She had no notion of how he felt, he realized quickly. Her face was flushed as though she'd quaffed a cup of summerwine and it had made her giddy, her eyes bright and merry. "Gendry Waters," she said, giving him her hand to kiss. "Lady Walda and I have just laid a wager. I vouch for my sweet brother, Ser Loras and she vouches for you." Ser Loras had drawn himself up and his eyes were cool and indifferent as he looked at Gendry. It made him feel small, like a gnat to be crushed under a spurred boot. But that was how the Knight of Flowers always looked at him, with loathing.

"I'm not a knight."

"You should say _Pardon me, Your Grace, I am not a knight_ ," a pimpled girl said, wrinkling her nose. They were making a mockery of him, he thought, his temper rising. He kept his eyes stonily on the girl until she was forced to look away, still with that ugly little grimace on her face as though she'd smelt something foul. He would not say the words.

"My sister Sarra is too finicky," another splotched and ill-favored girl, who looked remarkably like the first, whispered. Loud enough for the others to hear to be sure, but her voice all high and breathy as though she was speaking for him and him alone. She winked at him and Gendry decided that the two were probably twins. Ugly twins. "But _I'm_ not. It's Serra and I pledge myself on your side."

"And I on Ser Loras," Sarra said, shrugging.

The others clamored to take part. The shy, pale, pretty one they called Roslin said she could vouch for neither, the bigger, handsomer one who was Fair Walda chose him. Ami told him he was a dear, darling, handsome thing but since Fat Walda was her sister and had laid her wager on him, she _had_ to pick Ser Loras. And soon the men were laying their bets too and Queen Margaery's smile grew brighter and brighter with every other pledge, while Gendry's mood grew blacker.

"But I'm not a knight," he had to repeat himself. Too loudly perhaps, because mousy little Roslin looked like he'd just bellowed a dockside oath in her pinched face.

"No matter," a man he did not know said dismissively. "You're strong and likely and you're both of the same age."

"You may have your pick," Queen Margaery said graciously, "of weapons and field. My brother shall not dispute it."

"That'll make it more exciting," a younger girl piped up.

 _Meaning you expect me to lose,_ he thought and gave her a glare for good measure. The jousting field was out of course - the Knight of the Flowers was a tourney champion who'd thrown even the Kingslayer on his golden rump at the last great tourney in King's Landing. A bow and arrow was laughable, nobody had ever taught him to shoot, save himself with a sling when he brought down small birds and mangy cats. He was still a stripling where swords were concerned and though he was a dab hand with a staff, he doubted whether Ser Loras would fare poorly there either. After all, noble young boys were taught with staffs at first, before their arms-masters put their first tourney swords in their hands.

"The hammer, boy," someone whispered in his ear. "Have you seen the size of Loras Tyrell? You'll knock him flat on his skinny arse."

"The hammer," he said, his throat dry, testing the words out to see how they sounded. A hush fell around him as the others heard and then the whispers circled around them. The old king's bastard meant to take on the warhammer. "I choose the warhammer," he said, his voice growing louder. "Here on Flowstone Yard. Ser Loras may choose any weapon he likes."

Queen Margaery studied him, her brown eyes giving away nothing but amusement. "So be it," she murmured, "Tomorrow then, an hour before sundown? No doubt we will all want to see this most daring feat." He bowed stiffly to her and left. _Bitch_ , he thought.

He was just storming out of the yard when a high-pitched voice rang out behind him. "Wait!" she said, huffing behind him. She put her hands to her prodigious, heaving bosom and waited until he came back to her. Slowly and unwillingly. "You forgot my favor," she said imperiously. "You must wear it since I was the one to pledge on you first."

 _Fuck you for that,_ he thought as she fussily tied a scrap of pink silk and lace around his upper arm. Her hands lingered too long, he thought. "I'm Lady Walda Frey," she said, "a granddaughter. Merret Frey's my father. My mother's a Darry by blood. Ami's my older sister but she's a widow and she was a whore before that. I'm not like her." She said all this as though she expected it to mean something to him.

He was on the point of telling her it was worth a mummer's fart to him but then he said, instead, "Fat Walda, right? The other one was Fair Walda."

She dropped his arm like it was a hot coal. "Yes," she said sulkily, "yes, it's Fat Walda. And it's Gendry the Bastard, isn't it?"


	9. The King and the Maiden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> POVs - Robb Stark, Brynden Tully, Jeyne Westerling.

_I am not in love with you._   
_I am in love with the idea of you._   
_And frankly, that is the worst way to love someone._

* * *

The loop had been slipped and all that was left was to knot the cord tight and let the noose do its work.

Dawn was just breaking over the flat plains of the Crownlands but Robb had been up for hours. Mist rose off the river and he drew the hood of his cloak over his shaved head, both to ward off the morning chill and for concealment. He heard snatches of song as the laundresses and camp-wives straggling back to their tents, pots of water balanced on their hips and barefoot children clinging to their skirts.

In the winter town when his father was lord, there had been no barefoot children nor poxed mothers. _At least these ones still have feet to carry them,_ he thought, with a pang. The krakens had set Winterfell to torch and murdered and maimed its people - they would not have spared the smallfolk in the winter town. The smell of fresh bread baking mixed pleasantly with woodsmoke and the sounds of the camp coming to life - men stretching and gossiping as they polished their scales and weapons or waited in line at the communal hearths for their breakfasts.

It was a wise king who listened to his people and so Robb had been doing for the past few days, whenever he had the chance. As usual, he waited in line for his own bread and broth but today he took his meal with a pack of southerners. It was always like this - northerners with northerners, the southron with other southrons. They were openly hostile against eachother, he had quickly come to realize. That was not how it should have been. _The Targaryens forged a kingdom out of seven and it held for three hundred years,_ he thought. _If they could do it, so must I._ His wife and mother were southerners, in looks he favored the Tullys of the Riverlands over his northern father but it seemed that when the men of the Reach saw him, they could look no further past than his wolf.

It was a rabble pack he joined - a nobly-born young squire of House Ambrose, a Blackbar guardsman, a wide-eyed farmhand who had no doubt been conscripted in the general run, a hearth-knight who served House Graceford and a bored sellsword with skin as black as pitch.

The talk lingered much on the previous night's assault on the Mud Gate, which had been badly damaged in the Battle of the Blackwater. Unhappily for the Starks and Tyrells who now laid siege to the city, the gate had not fallen.

"Well," stuttered the farmhand, tripping over his words but eager to force them out all the same, "it-tit twouldn't ha' bin gl-glorious now, woulda it? Mud Gate an' all. Th-the Dragon Gate, now th-that woulda bin grand."

The sellsword regarded him with tolerant amusement, much as he would a flea that was not worth the killing. "Humfrey Waters holds the Dragon Gate, boy," he said and for all that he looked as though he could have been from the Summer Islands, he spoke like a Highgardener born and bred. "Damn bastard he is, damnedest bastard of all. Can't reason with a bastard with sweet talk or steel, too damn pig-headed. I'd know, being one."

 _Flowers_ , Robb thought.

"Ever been in battle, boy?" the squire asked the bumpkin. He was younger than him by a good many years and clearly relished his superiority.

"Y-yes m'lord," the farmhand said meekly, spooning broth into his mouth. "Twas something fierce!"

"So have I," the squire said proudly. "I took out a Myrish crossbowman myself and-" The sellsword raised his eyebrows delicately and the hearth-knight chortled. "I have!" the fair-haired boy insisted, clearly wounded. He was around Robb's age but he looked so very much younger. Sometimes when he glanced into a pool of still water or his wife's looking glass, he could hardly recognize his face - the fine lines fanning from eyes and mouth, the hard line of the lips, the shaved brow and forehead on which a crown rested so snugly.

"A game?" the hearth-knight suggested to the sellsword. He plucked a pair of well-worn ivory dice out of a pocket but the sellsword shook his head.

"I never play with fortune," he said, with a flash of white teeth, "except in war."

"Suit yourself." The hearth-knight shrugged and turned to Robb. "And you, good ser? You'll play?" He must have taken Robb to be many years older than his real age. No grizzled knight worth his salt would have spoken so civilly to a shaven stripling.

"I'm no ser," Robb grunted, "but I'll play." His mother's gods and septons preached against dicing and gaming - and lewd music and dancing and painted women as well, for good measure. The trees in the godswood said nothing on the subject but his father would surely have frowned to see him play at games of chance. _But you are dead, my lord father,_ Robb thought bitterly. _And_ _you have left me all alone._

Eddard Stark had left his son when he was only fourteen, before he had ever held a steel sword in his hand or felled a man for justice or in battle or lived through a second winter. He had left with so many things unsaid, so many questions unanswered. _You left me Winterfell and my brothers and you never told me what to do. Why father?_

"Not bad for a boy," the hearth-knight said, after a few throws. "What parts are you from, now?"

"North," Robb said evasively. "And I'm not a boy."

"Can't be more than five-and-twenty, if that," the knight said dismissively. "That's a boy to me. And the north's a big place, I've heard so speak up. Where are you from then?"

"The place with the prettiest girls," he said.

" _Are_ there pretty girls up north?" the sellsword asked reflectively. "I heard the wolves suckle you and you fuck bears."

"You heard wrong," he said pleasantly. Robb Stark had not lived in a war-camp for a year without learning a thing or two. "It's our members that are longer than a bear's. Our women are without peer."

The sellsword chortled good-naturedly. "Mayhap I'll go there one day," he said. "I've heard there's land for the taking. Might take a peerless woman if I can catch one. Never had much luck with wives."

"Lots of land," Robb agreed. _But poor land and barren._

"King Robb's going to measure out land to anyone who wants it," the squire said, "I heard so myself. Land and titles up north."

"Anyone who proves himself worthy," Robb corrected him.

"Meaning anyone who pays for it," the hearth-knight said grumpily, "tis not for the likes of us."

"Do the southrons like the sound of it?" Robb asked cautiously. He had been rather proud of the idea - after all, had not his father intended to settle the Gift with men who could tend the land? "For sure, the northmen won't be best pleased."

"Oh aye, the great ones do," the hearth-knight said, waving his hand in dismissal. "Why shouldn't they? Seems to me the boy king could spare _us_ folk a thought when he's siphoning off his land."

"Maybe he will," Robb suggested evasively, "I've heard he's fair and noble-"

"He's a pup," the hearth-knight said rudely. "Suckling at his mother's teat but a year ago. It's the Blackfish and Lord Tyrell that rule him, mark my words."

"H-he coulda bin worse," the farmer's boy suggested. "Coulda bin like Joff-Joffrey. The Bastard."

"I heard he nailed antlers onto men's heads and broiled 'em alive in wildfire," the squire said with relish. "Sounds a proper cunt."

 _Oh he was,_ Robb thought grimly and wondered yet again what had happened to the Lannister queen and her children. Were they dead, and the news kept secret by Stannis, or had they truly managed to flee the city? Yet another thing for him to take care of if - no, when - the walls of King's Landing yielded. _We have the greater number,_ he reminded himself wearily. _But they have armored themselves behind stout walls._

He had won the game but courteously he refused the coins the hearth-knight would have counted out sullenly into his palm. The older man looked at him with new respect as he took his leave and he could hear him speculating to the others behind his back - "soft fine wool his cloak was, d'you think he was some young lord from the north..."

He found his great-uncle reading while he ate in his tent. "You look fresh," Ser Brynden observed dryly.

"I've been up hours." He pulled out a stool for himself and helped himself to a handful of nuts from the bowl on the table.

"Ah, to be young again." Meticulously, the Blackfish folded a corner of the page he was reading and set the book aside.

"What was it?"

"A dull history of a dull time. Nothing to concern you."

Robb did not press him further - books had never held much interest for him or his siblings. "Someone has to speak to Mace Tyrell," he said wearily. "I thinks he plans to starve King's Landing out like he almost did Dragonstone."

"You'd grow grey before then and the rest of us would all be moldering in our graves. Not," the Blackfish reflected, "that it would trouble Mace Tyrell."

"His lady mother would most likely still be alive then. Battering her son's skull with a wooden skillet, for being a blockhead."

"Yes, I can see Olenna Redwyne doing that." Ser Brynden allowed himself a quiet chuckle. "You are his king and he is your good-father. By rights, you should speak to him."

"If I must, I must," Robb said, with a grimace. "And I thought Walder Frey was stubborn and self-important. Margaery and her grandmother are twice the men he is. If Willas Tyrell is as bad, I'll go mad."

"Take Tarly with you," Ser Brynden suggested. "He's raring for a fight and as frustrated as the rest of us with Mace's pussyfooting. Brace him up, tell him about all the glory that will be his-"

"Sweet talk him, you mean."

"If a horse won't be led to water," Ser Brynden said, with a shrug. "We have King's Landing tied up quite nicely. Now all that's left-"

"-is to tighten the noose. Yes, I was thinking the same myself." He rose and stretched. "It was good speaking to you, uncle. It always is."

"And you are the only nephew I have left that I can be proud of," Ser Brynden sighed. "The rest are blockheads, well and truly."

 _The only nephew..._ "Someday I will have to approach my Aunt Lysa," he said, "she cannot hold herself aloof from the world forever. I'll have to take her boy from her keeping."

"If he lives that long," the Blackfish grunted. "Milk off the breast and sweetsleep never nourished a man for long. Else you'll have to deal with Harry Hardyng and that's all to the good I say, though he's no kin of mine. You'd like him. Chatters too much, a little wild at times but a pleasant boy all the same-"

He never finished his sentence. A hassled-looking guardsman entered the tent and said, "Your Grace, there's a-a lady for you."

"A lady?" Robb asked bewildered.

The guardsman twisted at the fringe of his tunic fretfully. "I don't know, Your Grace," he said, "a lady and her escort and them poorly. She was asking for you, said you owed her, caused quite a state when they arrived... Lord Tarly has 'em in his keeping now, to keep them quiet he says. Rabble he says-"

Robb frowned. That did not sound like good news. "Have them sent here," he said grimly, "tell Lord Tarly that I command it."

"Of course, Your Grace. At once."

Robb drummed his knuckles against the table restlessly. "A lady," he said uneasily and glanced at the Blackfish.

"Some... woman of yours perhaps?" the Blackfish asked smoothly. "Perhaps with a child?"

There had been women, Robb could not deny. But they had all been camp-followers and he had not lain with any woman save his wife after his marriage. "He said a lady," he insisted defensively. "And he made no mention of a child."

It seemed a long time before a pair of different guardsmen, in the Tarly livery, drew back the tent flaps and brought the woman with them. She was willowy, her long brown hair tangled and falling over her face and shoulders. Her shapeless dark cloak was drawn tightly over her body and beneath it, her naked feet were scratched and bruised. The two men behind her were likewise a sorry sight.

Before he could say a word, she fell to her knees before him. "Your Grace," she said, her voice high and cracked, "you promised that you would repay me." She pushed back her hair from her face but he did not see it to remember her voice. Her voice had haunted his dreams for months.

"Jeyne," he whispered and before he could stop himself, before he remembered where he was or in front of who, he slid to his knees and pulled her into his arms. Her face was wet with tears and he kissed her eyelids, her nose, her bruised lips. "Shh, sweetling. I'm here. I'm here now."

* * *

_The northern girl had a wild beauty, as he recalled, though however bright a torch might burn it could never match the rising sun._

* * *

The Westerling girl was as lovely and lissome as a woodland doe. Women had never aroused him, but he could appreciate their beauty nonetheless. Jeyne Westerling was a rare one, for sure. Where Mace Tyrell's daughter had charm and grace, Jeyne had the soft beauty of her face. Bathed and gowned in a manner suited to her rank, she took her seat at the table, eyes lowered demurely. Even in the commander's tent, where she was the only woman present and all were lords and knights, they all craned to have a look at her as though she was some wild animal escaped from a menagerie.

It made Brynden feel strangely protective of her, he wanted to throw his cloak over her shoulders and cover her from those cruel eyes. _She should have dined alone,_ he thought but he knew it were best that she were shown to them all at the beginning. There would be worse rumors about her if Robb kept her secreted away - that she was his western whore and dared not show her face in good company.

Robb rose from the head of the table and taking her by the hand, led her to her seat. "My good lords," he said, "this is Lady Jeyne Westerling, who did me kind service when I was mortally wounded in the westerlands. She was the daughter of an enemy but she tended my wounds and sent me safely on my way, without her family's knowledge and for that and fear of Lannister retribution, she has been thrown out from her own home. Were it not for the goodness of her heart, I would surely have been dead by now." He bowed to her. "Lady Jeyne, you have my greatest thanks and I promise that I will do whatever is in my power to see that you never want."

The girl's voice was barely louder than a whisper. "I thank you, Your Grace." The smile Robb gave her was more tender than any he had ever given his bride.

 _This could lead to trouble,_ Brynden thought darkly. He would have to have a word with the boy. Whores were one thing but he doubted that Margaery Tyrell would stand for a nobly-born mistress - especially if Robb sent Jeyne to attend her as a lady-in-waiting, as he said he meant to. _He's got a good head on his shoulders,_ Brynden thought. _He won't make an ass over himself over a chit of a girl._ He glanced at Mace Tyrell to see if he had taken offense but the stout southron lord was completely indifferent to the girl's presence. Less indifferent was Lord Tarly who studied the girl carefully over the rim of his wine-cup - no doubt the guardsmen, who were his creatures after all, had told him of what had transpired in those unguarded moments in the tent.

_He's promised to hold his tongue though. For now at least._

He would have to mention the girl to Cat, see that she was married off as quickly as possible. _Or see to it myself,_ he thought. It was a woman's work but Cat was in no fit state to attend to such matters and he would never entrust Jeyne Westerling to the tender mercies of the Tyrell women. Better that the scandal passed by before they ever heard of it. Better that there was no scandal to hear of at all.

The mead was plentiful and the meat tender and well-spiced, but Brynden's supper soured in his stomach when he caught the looks Robb and Jeyne gave each other. _Like a pair of mooncalves_ , he thought in irritation. The lass fairly glowed under his attention and Brynden had never seen Robb look so much the boy as he did that night, laughing and jesting with Jeyne. She sang at the end of the meal and she had a sweet voice, Brynden had to admit.

"You'll never lack for suitors now, lass," Brynden told her dryly when she finished, flushed and happy at the generous encore she received. "I'll wager you've broken a few hearts tonight."

Robb scowled at that but forced himself to say lightly, "Seen anyone who caught your fancy, Jeyne?"

She had turned pink from the tips of her ears at Brynden's compliment but when Robb spoke to her, she threw him a melting look with her whole clean, innocent heart in her eyes. _I'll wager Margaery Tyrell never once looked at him like that. And really that's all he ever wanted, wasn't it? That's all a boy ever wants - to be looked at like he's her man._ "Only you, Your Grace," she said shyly and Brynden thought that Robb would have kissed her then and there if they were alone. _Fucked her too when he'd gotten over his high-handedness too,_ Brynden thought darkly. _Convinced himself he was Florian and she his Jonquil and that it was all holy and sainted and meant to be._ Oh he knew the way it was with boys of sixteen. Idiots the lot of them.

"My lady," he said, offering the girl his arm before cocksore young Robb could. "May I escort you to your tent?"

Robb, who had been about to open his mouth to suggest the same thing, fell back realizing the impropriety of what he was about to do.

Jeyne smiled timidly at him and rested her hand on Brynden's arm. "Thank you, Ser Brynden," she said, "I would be very pleased." She smelled incongruously like violets and Brynden wondered where Robb had managed to cull the gowns and serving maids and scents for her, in the middle of an army.

He voiced his disapproval. "A war camp is no place for a gently-born lady."

"It was the only place I had left in the world, ser," she said quietly. "I have no kin or friends left to turn to but His Grace."

"Of course," he said quickly. "I did not mean to suggest otherwise. But I am sure you will rest easier when you are far away from here."

She only nodded at that. "What is Queen Margaery like?" she asked abruptly.

"Gracious and charming," Brynden said promptly. "Kind and fair to look upon and wise beyond her young years. Indeed, in all manner of things she is as a queen should be." _As tart a gooseberry as ever there was,_ he thought. _This one is a s_ _ugared plum, gone in one bite and there's nothing left of her._

"I shall be pleased to serve her then."

They had reached her tent and Brynden bowed to her. "Sleep gently, my lady," he said, "if there is anything you need-"

She turned her smooth, girlish face up to him and he had to wonder whether she was truly as innocent as she looked. She had grit, that much had to be said of her if she could travel the breadth of the westerlands with only two men to look after her. She had the courage of her convictions if she had dared defy her family for the sake of a man she did not know, her sworn enemy. She might be soft but that did not make her stupid, he thought. _Well maybe not a sugared plum then._ "I shall ask you or His Grace," she said, "thank you, you are very kind."

He would have left for his tent to make immediate arrangements to have her sent to Harrenhal and all might have been well for a time, but for the shouts they heard just then. Jeyne grabbed his arm, eyes wide in fear. "What's happening?" she breathed.

As gently as he could, he prised her off him. "Nothing to concern you, my lady. Stay here." She didn't of course - women never listened, did they? Like a shellshocked puppy, she trailed after him as he strode purposefully through the camp.

"What's happening?" he barked, thrusting himself roughly past the press of men that crowded towards the commander's tent. But the flaps were being rolled up and he saw that he was a fool to ask. Against the starlit expanse of the night and the dark walls of King's Landing in the distance, fumes of smoke began to rise and then they saw the faint red-gold glow of flames. _What in the name of Seven Hells..._

"The city's burning," Jeyne whispered redundantly. Somehow she had wormed her way to Robb's side and she clung to his arm like a child. He squeezed her arm but at least he made no move to hold her as he had in the morning. "Sweet gods."

"Yes," Robb said, studying the sky. He turned, his eyes gleaming not unlike his wolf's Brynden thought. The light of battle was in them. "We attack."

* * *

_Gentle Mother, strength of women,_   
_Help our daughters through this fray._   
_Soothe the wrath and tame the fury,_   
_Teach us all a kinder way._

* * *

 

Jeyne hunkered down next to the cooling ashes and warm embers of the small fire the women had stoked up. In one hand she held a heel of bread and with the other she cradled a bowl of stew against her chest. The heat was pleasant against her bare hands and besides, her woolen mantle kept her warm - far warmer than the other poor women who had little by way of covering or protection. They eyed her uneasily but made no move to turn her away so Jeyne sat with them. Laundresses, they called themselves. Her mother would have called them whores and soldiers' doxies, would have warned her that a Westerling of the Crag, a lady gently-raised should not be seen near them. She should spit on them.

 _Look at me now, mother,_ she thought fiercely, dunking her bread in the stew. _I'm all but a whore now myself._ Well she wasn't but she could have been, if the gods had not smiled on her and led her to Robb in safety. _A kindness for a kindness._

She could have tossed sleepless on her pallet in her tent for hours more, as she had all night ever since the men had left but she had decided to put her things on and look about the camp. For hours the fire had raged fiercely behind the city walls but then it had begun to die down. The smoke hung thick and acrid in the air as before, though and Jeyne wondered whether now the city, only a league away, was being sacked.

The women spoke in low, fearful murmurs - snatches of gossip they had heard from their men when they'd been arming themselves before the battle. Nothing clear, nothing certain. Their children played close at hand, ready to be plucked up at a moment's notice and carried away if the time came to flee. A few held swaddled babe to the breast, gowns slipping easily off their shoulders as though it was the most natural thing in the world. A strange new world that Jeyne had never seen before. Even their voices were in a ragtag of accents she had never heard before - but then she had never left the westerlands before, never been farther home than Lannisport.

"King Stannis-"

"Should be _Lord_ Stannis-" another woman interjected. "King Robb's our only king."

"Lord Stannis then, he has a fire priestess. She might'a set up a great fire. Accidentally."

"She's his eastern whore," another said, licking her lips with satisfaction at the sordid tale, "pleases him in all sorts of _unnatural_ ways that no decent woman ever would-"

"Well we're not decent women are we?" a girl with limp yellow hair said, laughing. "We're all whores, Talia. So tell us all about them unnatural ways."

Jeyne sat quietly and listened to the tales that flew over her head. She was naturally shy and in any case, she had nothing concrete to contribute - nor could she imagine up a tale as lively as some the women were spinning. It made her feel bold and daring and wicked just to listen.

"-so you put one leg up bout halfway and let him put his-"

She blushed cherry-red to hear them but nevertheless, it _was_ fascinating. _I wonder if Robb-_

"Have you had any word, my lady?" a woman asked her very civilly.

Jeyne almost dropped her bowl in surprise. "I-I? No I haven't. No. I'm sorry."

The woman nodded at her. "I hope you're settled comfortable?"

"Yes," she said, pink with embarrassment. "You are very good to ask."

The woman smiled at her. "And you're a sweet young lady. Poor thing," she said, "but never fear, King Robb will do right by you."

"He will?"

"Aye," the woman said. "He's a good king. A good man and I've known precious few of them. Kind to children and gentle with women - how hard is that, you'd think? But there's so many that aren't, so very many." She sighed wearily. "I hope you never know a man like that, my lady."

 _I don't know any men at all._ "I've known women like that," Jeyne mumbled. "They can be worse." The woman cackled in amusement and nodded her head vehemently in agreement. "Excuse me," she said, "I think I've seen someone I know." She'd seen the page boy at supper the night before - Lord Tarly's son though she could not for the life of her remember his name.

"Excuse me," she said awkwardly and the boy stopped in his tracks and dropped her a hasty bow. "But do you know what has been happening? We've had no news at all-"

He was clearly impatient to be on his way but courtesy had no doubt been drilled into him with a stick. The gods knew that was how her mother went about it - with a birch rod or a whip. "Lord Stannis burned the High Septon in front of Baelor's Sept," he said, tapping his feet restlessly. "His priestess made him do it. And then the people set the city on fire. Or she did. I don't know. There was a great fire and some opened the gates and my lady, may I please be on my way? I have messages to deliver."

"Of course, of course. I'm sorry to detain you-" but he was already on his way before she could finish her sentence. She was still holding the bowl she realized, her numb fingers trembling. She wished he had stayed so she could have asked him more.

The woman she had been speaking to slipped up behind her. "What now, dearie?"

"I-I don't understand," she said feebly. Her mother would have called her stupid, Sybell would have pieced together the story and what it meant at once from fragments. She would have marched through the camp, asking everyone and anyone what they knew or guessed or thought - she was the last thing from shy. "I think I should pray." Yes, that was what she would do - pray that the fire was all ashes by the time Robb entered the city that he was now safe and secure and the wicked Lord Stannis and his priestess dead in the conflagration of their own making. _Please don't let him be hurt. I don't think I could bear it._

The woman must have noticed the tumult in her face for she nodded sagely and taking Jeyne's arm, led her gently away. "Always the sensible thing to do, poor thing," she agreed. "Praying helps. Is there a man out there you're praying for in particular? I've one of my own. 'Course we never traded words before a septon but it hurts just as fierce to know he's there in the thick of it."

"Yes," Jeyne whispered. "There is a man." _But he's not mine. He's Margaery Tyrell's._

The woman led her beyond the camp and Jeyne was glad for the supple calfskin boots that had been provided for her - her old leather slippers had been worn to shreds on the ride to the Crownlands and at the hand she had been barefoot. A serving-woman had salved her cuts and bruises the night before and it did not hurt very much to walk now. They walked up a grassy knoll, to the single solitary tree that stood on it. A face had been scratched crudely on it, not carved and Jeyne was bewildered.

"But I thought you were a southron-"

"Oh I am, dearie," the woman said cheerfully, plopping to her knees. "I grew up in Blackbuckle where we keep to the Old Gods - that's a way's off from Raventree Hall where Blackwoods have been ruling since the Age of Heroes."

"You mentioned that you hadn't been married in a sept."

"Oh my man's sworn to the Seven. Doesn't make our love any less true." The woman beckoned to her. "The gods are the same everywhere. They listen in the sept and they listen from the trees. 'Sides, there's no sept any parts nearby nor any true heart-tree - Andals burnt 'em all thousands of years ago - so we make do with what we can. Even His Grace comes here when he's in a black mood." The woman gave her a knowing smile.

Jeyne sighed and knelt. Hours rolled by and Jeyne's stomach had just begun to grumble again when she heard the horse clopping slowly up the hill. An angry red scar had been slashed across the man's face, the color scarcely dulled by the salve that had been set to it, and there were spots of blood on his tunic - else for that he was unharmed. She leaped to her feet and the other woman, who had fallen into a light doze leaning against the tree, woke up with a start.

"Robb," she whispered, picking up her skirts and running to him. She was weary to the bone but he looked like he could have fought for a day and a night more. _Like the Warrior in all his fierceness._ He dismounted easily and his hard arms encircled her waist. The woman bobbed a discreet courtesy but Jeyne hardly noticed her leave. "I was so frightened for you."

He rested his forehead against hers, a smile tugging at his lips. "Did you pray for me?"

"I did." She put her arms around his neck, standing up on tip-toe so that her body was straight against him. Without thinking, she pressed her lips against his. "I'm sorry," she was about to say awkwardly but the words never left her lips. He drew her against the tree and the last thing she saw before she closed her eyes was his smile, as bright as victory.

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> POVs - Margaery Baratheon. Sansa Stark. Gendry Waters. Jeyne Westerling.

The sow in pink satin hovered to her right, the mouse in blue silk to her left. _And what does that make me?_ Margaery thought. Not a lioness, no. _A fox in quilted yellow brocade, queen of a motley menagerie._ The crown on her head was iron and gold, but it seemed a mockery of the kingdom that her lord husband did not hold. He had won a city and the south was his, in name at least. This they celebrated with wine and song, but they never mentioned that beyond that stretched the burning tracts of the riverlands and a lost kingdom.

Not to her face, at least.

She was back where her mother had always dreamed she would be, a chatelaine at the center of her own court. Flowers and fountains, singing and sewing. Not quite the queen militant her grandmother must secretly have hoped for. _And so we begin again,_ she thought and forced the semblance of a gracious smile on her face. Some days it came as naturally as breathing. Some days it held all the weight of a suit of armor.

"Lady Jeyne," she murmured, holding out her hand for the girl to kiss. Ser Brynden had not lied when he had written to her, the Westerling chit was a beauty. If you liked them sweet and simpering, that is. "I owe you a great debt as do we all who call my lord husband king. I am honored to make your acquaintance."

"The honor is all mine, Your Grace."

The girl had clearly helped herself to the coffers at King's Landing, Margaery noted with sharp eyes. Either it had been all of her own doing or someone had suggested that she might like to make herself a new wardrobe out of Cersei Lannister's discarded finery. She stood a little stiff and awkward in the claret colored velvet, the bodice fashioned in the manner of a breastplate. Too small and diminished to wear the old queen's robes with ease. _Robb_ , Margaery thought. She knew it.

"I hope you will be kind enough to join my ladies," she said pleasantly, "I hope to become great friends and I am sure I cannot see enough of you." Fat Walda stiffened at that - she had rather fancied that Margaery could not do without her. _Good,_ Margaery thought with a spark of pleasure, _let the silly hens squabble among themselves. Walda will eat her up and with any luck, have Roslin for seconds._

"I- I would be honored, Your Grace. I have never served a queen before but I will try to do my best."

 _But you've served a king before, haven't you?_ she thought. _Serviced him too, if I go by hearsay._ "Margaery," she said and put her arms around the girl's waist. For good measure she kissed her as well, once on each cheek. "I will call you Jeyne and you shall call me Margaery." The metalwork bodice dug against her ribs and Roslin let out a little squeal.

"Oh Your Grace, your gown is torn!"

It wasn't, not really, just a scratch against the sharp edge that had caused a few fine silk strands to come loose. "Tsk. Perhaps I should armor myself like you, my Jeyne," she laughed.

"It's not my gown," Jeyne said awkwardly, stepping back. "It belonged to Queen Cersei. I had nothing of my own to wear when I came here and so His Grace was kind enough to offer me-"

 _Just as I suspected._ "No matter," Margaery said serenely, "we shall find you something to wear. Something more comfortable and... more suited to your station. Walda."

"Yes, Your Grace?" the fat one simpered.

"Your taste in clothes is beyond compare," she said sweetly, taking in all the frills and furbelows and flourishes on Walda's pink gown. The girl was a delight, as good as any experienced court jester. "Perhaps you might find something for Jeyne?"

The morning wore by in the old queen's apartments. She had the Frey girls scurrying back and forth, heaping the Lannister woman's gowns before her in a heap of jewel-toned velvets and brocades and metallic silks. "Rip them all apart," she said simply, "We will reuse the fabrics elsewhere but for now, I don't want anything to be left to remind me of her." She would have burned them if she could, but that she might as well burn up a few wagons worth of gold. Her practical soul revolted at the idea of it.

Robb drifted in, his fine linen shirt plastered to his back by sweat and dragging a wooden tourney sword. He stopped by her couch, kneading her shoulder playfully. "She had on a crown with emeralds when she came to Winterfell," he offered. "Light and airy, it was of white gold I think. It was beautiful."

"She took it with her," Margaery shrugged. "Wherever she went." She took his hand and played with his fingers, bare of any rings unlike her father's. "My love," she said, "have you seen Jeyne? She has so kindly consented to attend me as one of my ladies."

"Has she?" A shadow drifted across her boy husband's face and she forced herself not to smile at his transparency. "Well, I am glad."

"So am I. I miss my cousins at Highgarden and I am sure Jeyne and I will be the best of friends. Jeyne, my sweet," she called out and the girl, who had been trying to hide herself behind Fat Walda's bulk, rose with the greatest reluctance. She looked like a martyr about to be led to the wheel.

"Your Grace," Jeyne whispered, sinking into a deep curtsey. If she could, she would have melted into the floor but for now she had to be content with keeping her eyes down. Her flaming cheeks betrayed her and Robb's face was scarcely better. Gatehouse Ami sat back on her heels, mouth wide open as though she was at a playhouse. The other girls were scarcely better.

 _Yes you little ninnies,_ Margaery thought savagely, _do you like this? Did you think yourselves sweet starcrossed lovers?_

Robb nodded briefly at Jeyne and squeezing Margaery's hand said, "Well, I'll leave you to your labors then. Enjoy yourselves." And then he was gone, as swiftly as though the devils in the seven hells were behind him. _Well there's a special hell reserved for adulterers, isn't there?_ Margaery thought darkly. _And one for whores._ "See to a pink satin for dear Jeyne, just like yours," she murmured to Walda. "I am sure that it will be quite the thing for her."

* * *

All of Aunt Lysa's ladies wore gowns of silk in fluted folds, whites and greys and palest blues, the cool colors of a cloud. Sansa stood among them today, in the ragged semi-circle of women around the Lady of the Eyrie. Her hair itched from the dark dye that they had deemed necessary for her protection but she was glad for soon she would be able to wash it all off. _Not much longer now._

Aunt Lysa's lips were pursed in an unattractive rosebud as she read out from the gilt-edged scroll she held. Her words fell flat - they were not really hers, Sansa knew, but Littlefinger's. _Well at least she does not clench her teeth at reading them out,_ Sansa thought. _This is as far as sh_ _e will surrender to his will._ Not that Littlefinger had not had to pay dearly for her sufferance.

"And so I propose an alliance to our mutual satisfaction and advantage," Lysa Arryn droned on, "between ourselves, Lord of the Vale and Eyrie, Warden of the Easts, and our high and mighty cousin, His Grace, Robb Stark, King of Westeros and Lord of the Seven Kingdoms." Her fingers grappled restlessly in thin air, no doubt seeking the glass bowl of sugar comfits and bonbons that was never far from reach in her private apartments. In some ways, she was very like Robin - spoiled and fond of sweets.

 _Perhaps that's how I came across to Arya and the boys,_ Sansa thought, not a little guiltily. Serving as her aunt's maid and Littlefinger's pretended bastard had not come easy these past months.

Her aunt's petulance was ignored by the assembled lords and ladies in the High Hall. They hailed her proclamation with cheers and joy, which only caused Lady Lysa's frown to deepen. Hairbrushes would be thrown tonight, Sansa thought wearily. And who should be called to pick them up but Catelyn Tully's ungrateful, oafish daughter. Yohn Royce was _almost_ smiling, something Sansa had never thought he could do.

"My son and I will depart to pay our fealty to His Grace in King's Landing as soon as can be arranged," Lysa continued. "Those who wish to join us may take up the matter after we have dined." She inclined her head in dismissal and rose. She managed to sweep out of the hall quite graciously, listening with the last shreds of her patience to congratulations and expressions of relief and approval, extending her hand and cheeks to be kissed. After the great bronze doors had clanged shut behind her, she stormed up the twisting staircase to her own rooms with a face like death.

"To have to bend the knee to Catelyn's vile boy," she snapped, tearing off her fur tippet and tugging so hard at her necklace that it snapped. Pearls scattered across the floorboards, for all she cared they might as well have been peas, and the maids scrambled to chase them and pick them up. "I remember when she brought her brats, swanning all over the place with her brood, breeding like rabbits in a hutch..." She threw Sansa a particularly nasty look.

Sansa remembered their one and only journey to the Vale but faintly. It had been soon after Robin's birth, when he was old enough to be expected to live, and she could not have been more than five. She ducked to make herself inconspicuous and it worked for Lysa shouted for two of the other maids to attend her.

Annetta clicked her tongue when the doors slammed shut. "I thought she'd be happy to go back to King's Landing," she said, "it's such a grand place and all that. I'd sell my teeth to go."

"So would I," Sansa should quickly, before Annetta could suspect a thing. Alayne Stone would have, at any rate.

"I've never been and never shall, I suspect," the girl said gloomily. "Her Ladyship won't need the likes of me to attend her when she goes south. She'll take someone like Lady Myranda Royce. You too, you're Lord Baelish's daughter even if you are a bastard."

"You never know," Sansa said. "You go down, I'll find Lady Lysa's pearls and string them back before she misses them again."

"You're a darling," Annetta said with pleasure. "I suppose I could go down and fix my hair. Harry's always been sweet to me whenever I see him and I wouldn't mind slipping off with him again if I won't be missed."

"Harry?" Sansa asked, puzzled. "Is he your sweetheart?"

"La no!" Annetta giggled. "He's almost a knight and too fine for the likes of me, but so what? Nothing wrong with a good romp if neither of us are expecting anything more." Humming to herself, she fairly bounced down the stairs - no doubt to fix her hair, pull down her gown and take off everything else underneath it.

And so when Littlefinger climbed up the stairs to Lysa's antechamber, he found Sansa on her knees, counting pearls and cursing to herself because she was one short and Lysa _would_ notice. "Greetings daughter," he said cheerfully and swooping down, kissed her forehead and lips before she could say a word. It had become a little game of his, to kiss her as fast as he could before he could draw back. _A little harmless fun,_ Sansa told herself. It was nothing more. Littlefinger liked to have fun, to play silly little games. "How is she taking it?"

Sansa made a face and Littlefinger laughed. "Sulking, eh? Don't worry, pet, I won't let her take it out on you. A few screams and she'll be right as rain." Sansa blushed at the implication and Littlefinger chucked her chin. "Your innocence is touching, my dear. But blushes always look better with red hair, I think. I suppose you will be glad to be going home."

"King's Landing is not my home," she said, without thinking and then she remembered what they had told her about Winterfell. Perhaps it was the only home she had left.

"No, it never will be - not after what you've suffered there. But perhaps someday the Eyrie will be your home," Littlefinger said quietly. "Would you like that?"

"I suppose," Sansa said quietly. He had brought it up to her several times - marriage to Sweetrobin. He had told her that it was her duty, to secure the alliance between the north and the east. He had reminded her that she was a princess now, that she owed it to her brother. And he had never, never said the words that she could read behind the smiling lips - that she owed _him_. Her life and everything else.

 _Better Sweetrobin than Joffrey or the dwarf or any Lannister,_ she thought. _He saved me from that._ "What do you think happened to Sandor?" she asked suddenly, reminded of that day, her last in King's Landing.

"The Hound?" Littlefinger said carelessly. "Why do you care?"

"He was kind to me," she said simply, "in a way he was the only friend I had in King's Landing."

"You had me," he pointed out, rather sharply she thought.

"I know," she said quickly, "but you could never be openly kind to me. Of course that would give the game up but still... I suppose he's dead now," she said, more offhandedly than she felt. "There were so many battles in King's Landing after I left. Lord Stannis fought and my brother..."

"Oh no," Littlefinger said. "If they found his body, I would have known. No, I suppose he's fled with his prince, probably across the Narrow Sea."

"Across the Narrow Sea?" she said. "Where?"

He gave her a lazy smile and brushed his fingers over her lips and across her cheek. He trailed them across her earlobes, making her shiver, and down her neck. "That's a secret, my clever little sweetling," he murmured in her ear, "and one you shall very soon find out." He straightened. "Pack your things, child. As soon as I'm done pacifying Lysa we'll be making arrangements to travel south."

* * *

"Begging your pardon, Ser, but have you ever thought about marriage, Ser?"

"Marriage, eh? What's on your mind, boy?"

"Nothing, Ser."

The Blackfish, still intent on the letter he was finishing, only raised an eyebrow without even sparing a glance at Gendry. He sighed and reluctantly set down his master's quilted gambeson. "Ser Merrett Frey approached me today," he said reluctantly, knowing he might as well get over with it.

" _Ser_ Merrett Frey, is that what he's calling himself these days? The muttonhead never did manage to get himself knighted."

"He offered me his daughter's hand in marriage. Fat Walda. He said his lord father would pay the dowry if I was amenable."

"Her weight in silver, eh? That's a lot of silver. Well, you could do worse." Ser Brynden set down his quill and began to read through his letter. "But what I suppose you're asking is if you think you could do better."

"In a way, Ser."

"In a roundabout way which is what all you green boys ever think to ask a thing. I'll put it to you plainly, Gendry - you can do a lot better than Fat Walda Frey. Robb's taken a fancy at you, you're not half-stupid and you've a strong arm. Two of those would be enough for any boy with an itch in his feet to make his way in the world."

"Yes, Ser."

"Muttonhead Merrett won't be the first man to approach you with a daughter," Ser Brynden said briskly. "He knows how far you can go and he'd like to tie that lodestone of his around your neck, so it won't be his problem any longer. As long as you keep your cock in your breeches when it comes to men's wives and daughters, you should be fine." He handed the letter to Gendry. "This is for Lord Rowan, you might as well take it across now-"

The door clanged open, hitting the wall with such a thud that Gendry almost jumped. Robb stood in the doorway, the hood of his cloak drawn over his chalk-white face. Ser Brynden jumped to his feet. "Robb-"

"Uncle, I must speak with you," he said sharply, almost ripping off his cloak. "Alone," he added when Gendry stood there gaping at him.

"Of course, Your Grace," Gendry mumbled. It was only after he'd shut the door behind him that he'd realized he'd forgotten to take the Blackfish's letter with him. It was just as he was debating whether to make a nuisance of himself and enter for a moment that he realized that if he strained his ears, he could hear faint snatches of the conversation. Robb's voice was unusually shrill and loud tonight. The corridor was empty and he did not quite mean to _spy_ on his liege lord... but well, he had learned the value of information long ago as an apprentice boy. It seemed foolish not to listen.

"...only once... she is with child..."

A hand slammed down violently on the table and the Blackfish let out a roar.

"Please Uncle, you have to help me." Robb's voice sounded more frantic with every passing minute. The Blackfish must have reminded him to lower his voice, for Gendry heard nothing for a few moments. So Robb had bedded the Westerling girl. He had heard rumors, they all had, but he had not been able to believe them. She looked so sweet and innocent.

 _This will break Margaery's heart,_ he thought. Margaery! His mind raced as he considered it - in his mother's absence, the Blackfish was the first Robb would come to with his troubles. _Better she hear it from a friend than anyone else,_ he thought. The hour was late, but he could still get a message across to one of her women - perhaps Fat Walda? Or no, that one was not trustworthy. Margaery's brother would be better. Less cause for scandal.

"Take the girl to wife? Are you drunk or mad, nephew?" Clearly, the suggestion had caused the Blackfish to lose his impenetrable calm. A moment later he mastered himself and Gendry heard no more of the whisperings behind the thick stone door.

Gendry grimaced. They would be at it for hours now that a marriage had been broached. _Even his own brother could not get him to marry._ Ser Loras' quarters were not far from the Blackfish's, both being on the same level of rooms in Maegor's Holdfast. After a few false turns and wrong doors, he found himself at the door to Loras Tyrell's spartan cell. The room saw little use save at night, Ser Loras was usually to be found either in the practice yards or his sister's apartments or, if his grandmother could drag him to one, a council meeting.

Gendry steeled himself to expect a curly-haired page or handsome stable boy, possibly tousled and heavy-eyed, to open the door but it was the Knight of the Flowers who answered it.

"You." Ser Loras lounged against the doorframe, eying him as he might a blob of mud on his polished boots. Disconcertingly, his sheer linen shirt, which he must wear to sleep, was open at the neck. "What do you want, bastard?"

"Ser." Gendry sketched an awkward bow and Ser Loras' face twisted in a mocking smile. "I have a message for Her Grace."

"So?"

"A private message, Ser, for her ears alone. I was hoping you might take me to see her, to avoid the semblance of scandal." As the Blackfish's squire, the maester had rapped a dozen phrases in his head to be used interchangeably. "Court phrases", he called them. A passel of fancy words.

"My sister is not likely to be interested in the lovesick mewlings of blacksmiths' boys," Ser Loras said, straightening. "You may trouble her in the morning." He was about to slam the door in Gendry's face when he blurted it out.

"It's about the King. And Jeyne Westerling."

Ser Loras' eyes glittered, suddenly alert. After only a moment of hesitation, he grabbed Gendry's arm and pulled him in to the room. "Well," he said, shutting the door and sitting down on the small table, "you have my attention now. What is it?"

He would much rather have told Margaery himself, but there was nothing to be had for it now. There would be hell to pay if he displeased the Knight of the Flowers. "His Grace came to see the Blackfish just now," he said dully, "in a state. I didn't hear much but I-"

"-little eavesdropper-"

"-but I heard enough to know that Lady Jeyne is with child. And King Robb wants the Blackfish to help him."

"Really? How?"

Gendry shrugged. "Wants him to marry her, from what it sounded like."

Loras threw back his head and laughed. "How precious. The young king is so very _honorable_. But not as much as his father, it seems." The look on his face was as savage as Gendry had seen on any man's - twisting the boy's beautiful face into something hard and ugly. He looked like a butcher, rolling up his sleeves and preparing to dip into the day's bloody work. "I suppose you're the first to overhear."

Gendry shrugged. "Being a filthy little bastard from the gutters of Fleabottom has its uses. We're sneaky."

"And no doubt it was out of the kindness of your heart that you wanted to tell my sister first." When Gendry did not answer, Loras said more sharply, "well, speak up, blacksmith. Was it kindness? What do you want out of this?"

"She's a good woman," he said simply, "she doesn't deserve this. I don't want anything from her nor you, I'm loyal to the Starks and the Tullys, not to the Tyrells."

"I'm sure she will be touched by your concern for her soft woman's heart," Loras said sourly. "And if you're not a Tyrell man, it's only because we've not bothered to pay a price for you yet. You're just not worth it."

 _I wouldn't need a price,_ Gendry thought dully, _I'm already Margaery's man._ He had always been and it was fruitless to deny it. He had always known it in his heart, it was only that he had realized it tonight after what he had heard Robb Stark say, what he had heard him plead for. Ned Stark, whom he had seen just once, had honor. He had taken his bastard son home and raised him in his own household, loved him as though he were trueborn. But his son...

"I'll tell her," Loras said, shrugging on a tunic and pulling down his cloak from a peg on the wall. "And I'll mention her to you. I'm sure that'll please you."

"As you wish," Gendry said stonily. He was almost outside when Loras gritted something out through his teeth. "What?"

"Thank you," he said sulkily, his voice barely louder or clearer. Gendry rolled his eyes. Well, that was about as far as he would get with that aristocratic prick. He shut the door and meandered up the passage, lost in thought. Loras Tyrell had always had it in for him, since the day they had first seen each other. The why of it was something he had never been able to figure out.

"Why if it isn't Gendry Waters!" a piercingly shrill feminine voice called out from behind him. It was exactly the last person in the world he wanted to see. He did not quite turn tail and run, but he didn't bother to smile either.

"Lady Walda," he said flatly as she panted her way towards him, one hand pressed to her heaving bosom. "What brings you here?"

"I was looking for Ami," she pouted. " _She's_ always here."

 _Porking the squires, we all know,_ Gendry thought. Gatehouse Ami had offered to lower her portcullis for him as well but he had no desire to lose his maidenhead and contract the pox in one go.

"I saw you leave Ser Loras' room," she said sweetly.

"I had a message for him."

"Oooooh, how fascinating," she squealed. Without invitation, she looped her arm through his. "I suppose you've met with my father, Gendry."

"Yes."

"And did he have a special message for you, hmm?"

"Yes."

"Gendry, how naughty of you!" she squealed, rapping his knuckles. "You mustn't keep a lady hanging. What did you find to talk about? I'm sure it was a most interesting conversation."

"You."

She blushed and looked down. The effect would be more disarming if she did not look so very much like a meringue. "Oh sweet Gendry," she murmured, "how happy we will be."

"I did not answer him, my lady."

"But you will," she whispered, looking up at him with teary eyes. "Gendry, I'm not like my sister, not at all like Ami. I'm a maiden and if you want, you can see for yourself." Daintily, she lifted the hem of her skirts an inch. "You can look and you can taste," she whispered, pinning him against the wall. In the candlelight she looked faintly menacing. "You can even touch a little... if you want... you see, Ami's taught me a _few_ things."

"My lady," he said, sidestepping her. "I'm sorry but no, the answer is no. I can't marry you and I'm sorry but-" There was no use. Her mouth was wide open and before long she'd be squealing and he'd be in for it. "My lady," he said helplessly and without even bowing, scuttled away before the screaming could start. At any rate she would never be able to outrun him.

* * *

She had tossed the gowns over the trunk in the corner of the room, to be folded and sorted later. She was lucky that she had her own room and did not need to share like the other girls - a show of the queen's favor. The gowns were a melange of silks and satins - pinks mostly, a few yellows and creams. Not the most flattering of shades, but it could not be said that the queen had skimped on her duty. She had seemed sweet and gentle, kinder than many women Jeyne knew, which only made her feel worse.

She had told Robb just after supper and though he had been stricken, he had kissed her hands and told her not to worry, that he would take care of her and the child. _But can you trust a man?_ her mother would have said with scorn. _Can you trust a man to be anything less than a vicious dog, can you trust a woman to be anything less than a besotted fool?_ And then, in her way, she would have taken her destiny into her own keeping.

_Forgive me, mother, that I was not more like you._

It had happened only once, after the heat of the battle, and they had avoided each other ever since. _This is my_ _penance,_ she said, _a penan_ _ce for adultery and sin._ Tears flavored her tea, as she added a drop of pennyroyal to the concoction. She would be as sick as a dog tonight, she had seen how it happened with the girls who slipped in to the healer's hut in the dead of the night. She might even bled and it would serve her right if she bled her life away as well. Inside her, her baby was as small as a seed, little more than a flicker of life.

"I'm sorry," she whispered and now the tears fell faster, thicker. She knew what she had to do but it was so hard. She wished she had someone to hold her, Robb, just for this one night, to give her strength. That was not a sin, was it? To want comfort? "Mother in Heaven, I am so sorry." She had not told Robb of course, why add one more sin to his tally? And this was a woman's matter, she would only tell him that it was a miscarriage. She did not want him to think that she had made a sacrifice for his sake. It had been wrong, wrong and she had known it even as she had lapsed in pleasure.

Honey would make the tea go down smoother, though nothing could make it taste less than vile. She added the last ingredient and waited. _For what?_ she thought. _For your prince? There is no prince. There never was and there never will be. There is only you._

She dragged the chamberpot out from under her cot and wrapping the covers around her shaking shoulders, stirred the cup one last time. "I'm sorry," she whispered and then tipped her head back and drank the tea.


	11. Spring and Autumn

"Spring and autumn are wed today," Margaery said, clasping the bride's hands to her heart. "Your wedding was a song and so I hope your marriage shall be."

The groom stood tall and straight in his mud-and-water cloak, handsome still even with silver in his hair and beard. His bride, barely sixteen, was a doll in moonstones and Myrish lace. The Blackfish had trained his face to careful blankness, even though a tempest must have been raging in his mind. The Westerling chit kept her eyes low, her voice an anxious whisper.

"Your Grace is kind," Ser Brynden said in that disconcertingly even voice of his. "Lady Jeyne is very young and I am very old, I fear. But we hope to make a happy marriage."

"Not so old as all that, Ser," Margaery said sweetly. "If I were in your lady wife's place tonight, I could think of a great many things I might do to you." She let her voice trail off suggestively and was rewarded for her efforts by a true smile. "I am told that innocence and experience are best yoked together - why, you have only to look at myself and His Grace to see it."

"What is Your Grace then? Innocence or experience?"

"Innocence. Always." She snapped her fingers and the harpists picked up their instruments. "A poor wedding it would be without dancing. Ser Brynden, Lady Jeyne, you must take the floor first."

Jeyne lifted her eyes up from a thorough examination of her shoes. They were very pretty shoes, Margaery had to admit, but not so pretty as to warrant inspection for four straight hours . "Forgive me, Your Grace, but I cannot. I am ill." She did look very sickly, Margaery thought. _Mopey little wench. I had the grace to glow on my wedding day though I feared it as well._ "If you and His Grace would take our place?"

She did love to dance. "I will not press you then," Margaery said with a smile and kissed Jeyne's cheek. "Ser Brynden, I charge you with the task of whispering sweet nothings into your bride's ears."

"It will be an easy task, my lady, for one so fair as my bride." They were hollow words, nothing beyond what courtesy dictated, but Jeyne looked up as though startled. _Do you expect tenderness?_ Margaery thought scornfully. _Best sit down for a long wait then. If he had not a mask on, the Blackfish would truly be black in the face._

"See that you do not neglect your duty then. I am particularly tender of my Jeyne's welfare," she said and went off to find her lord husband. He found her first though, and with a courtly bow asked her for the pleasure. He must have had little heart for the festivities but it was his grand-uncle's wedding and who should be the first to put on a brave front but the instigator?

"How is my uncle?" was his first question.

 _More kingly than you will ever be._ "Gracious," she said. "I wish I could say the same for his sweet bride but she was so fearfully wan... one might think her heart was not in it, though we all know theirs was a marriage of love. Certainly it could not be one of gain, not with her unfortunate dower."

He threw her a sharp look. "I am told Lady Jeyne has fared poorly of late."

 _How delightful._ "How sad. You must console her, husband. I would not want to see the roses fade in those fresh cheeks of hers."

He sighed. "Are you enjoying yourself, Margaery?"

"It is the custom to, at a wedding."

"You shall have a surfeit of them then. It seems to me that the governance of the realm is to be given wholly over to merrymaking. My Uncle Edmure and sisters must soon be wed."

"And my brothers too," she reminded him. "I have three of them. Two are said to be quite skilled with sword and lance." _And one with a quill._

He switched track. "Winterfell has been retaken."

"By Lord Karstark, yes," she said. Did he think her a fool? She had known soon after the raven had alighted at the maester's tower. "Not a victory to sing of, though. There were only two handfuls of heads to lop off."

"Yes, the other spikes must have been quite lonely," he said dryly. "I was sent a token by the Bolton bastard as well. He seemed quite proud of it."

"Does he think that a token might wipe the taint of bastardy? His father might soon marry. I think Lady Roslin should do nicely for him."

"I leave such matters of the heart to your discretion and careful planning," he said. "The token he sent was quite unusual. It put a smile to my face."

It was the way he said it that made her uncomfortable - she had never heard him sound so flat before. "Joy is rare in times of war. We should snatch it while we can."

"Should we?" He looked tired. "I shall show you what you he sent me. Perhaps you might recant your words."

He kissed her hand at the end of the song and escorted her to the high table. One dance was clearly enough - he had never been trained in the arts of chivalry, it seemed. _Not for me though_ , she thought sullenly. There had been nights at Highgarden when she had danced her slippers to shreds. Propriety demanded that she sit with her husband. For a time at least.

He must have seen her twitching, even with her hands folded demurely in her lap, for the ghost of a smile graced his face. "I am sorry."

She raised an eyebrow.

"For everything," he clarified. "I was a poor son and a worse brother. Why would I be any better as a husband?"

She covered his hand with hers. She might feel little but contempt for the man but she could sense his pain. This was not a time to cut deeper into it, regardless of what her grandmother might say of lost chances and striking while the iron was hot. _I_ _am not a blacksmith after all. I am a queen._ "You avenged your lord father and you will your brothers. You marched south for justice."

"Not justice, Margaery. Vengeance," he said. "It will not bring back Bran and Rickon. My lady mother was right when she said so - but I was too proud to listen and dismissed her wisdom as crazed grief. If I were wise, I would have swallowed my pride and bent the knee to Joffrey, ploughed my fields and kept my brothers safe."

"But then you might never have had me," she said, with a smile.

"Mayhap that would have been for the best too."

That made her angry. "Are you a gelded septon or a king, to speak so?" she demanded. "You have taken a king's liberties with the wench you've given to your uncle tonight. The bones they pile up in your name would be enough to build bridges. You are a king, anointed in blood. Have the courage to own up to it."

"And you are twice queen." He squeezed her hand. "I am sorry to distress you so, my lady."

"I am not distressed," she said haughtily. "You speak as though I am a whimpering girl - but perhaps that sort of woman is more to your taste? You are the one who should be tucked up in bed with a hot posset and a lover to simper at you while you moan and groan."

He laughed at that, good humor chasing away his gloom. "Perhaps you would care to be that lover?" he said sweetly.

"I feel that you have made it abundantly clear that I am to be your queen, to give you counsel and bear your sons. Not your lover, to be dandled on the knee and kissed in corners." She looked him in the eye. "If its lovesick mewling you want, have Jeyne bedded now. No doubt your uncle will be good enough to slip out of the room while you slip in."

Abruptly he said, "She is not carrying my child."

" _What_?"

"She... took care of it, she told me. Before the wedding. She had no wish to shame any of us." He swallowed. "It was a hard decision and she made it herself. I never..."

"A pity she did not think of it before she took your seed."

"That is why she has been so ill of late."

 _A pity she did not die of it._ "Is that supposed to gentle me towards her? I have no love for her, knowing what she is, and never will."

"She will be out of your way soon. The Blackfish intends to send her to Riverrun soon."

 _Not soon enough for me._ "A good start but a woman like her will soon try to worm her way back into my life, I think."

"A woman like her?" Perhaps she had spoken too boldly even for his woebegone mood for he flushed in anger. "How can you say so when you are no better?"

She put down her cup. "Excuse me?"

The words spilled forth from him as though he had held himself in check for too long. "You fed me lies when I gave you only the truth. Do you remember our wedding night? You swore to me that you were."

"And I was."

"But you never bled," he insisted and then blushing more deeply in mortal embarrassment, "and you were... practiced, it seemed. Skilled."

She threw back her head and laughed in scorn. So _this_ what had been troubling him? _Merciful Mother, grant me patience._ "You might be a most puissant warrior but when it comes to the arts of love, you seem to have no more sense than a babe in swaddling. Go ask a maester why I did not bleed. Or your mother. And remind them that I have been riding horses since I could walk. As for skill... I have an imagination and I am not ashamed of it. I was told to please you and it seems I did. Perhaps too well. A man would have known a woman better, but then a crown and a sword do not make a boy what he is not."

He looked at her suspiciously. "You have addressed every doubt that might have crossed my mind."

"That is because there are so very few that seem to," she said tartly. _It is not my consummate skill but your inherent stupidity._ "I cannot make you trust me, no more than you can. You thought I betrayed you and in turn, you did the same, is that the way of it?"

He looked away. "No. It was lust that led me astray."

"Well at least you are honest," she said bitterly. But the words themselves were hurtful. _It was lust that led me astray. You were not enough._

They sat in silence, watching the dancers. Northern warriors and girls from the Riverlands and the Reach. Smiling, laughing, flirting. Maybe marriages would come of it. It would do much to mend the fractured realm, she thought.

"I am sorry," he said finally. "Again. I had hoped that we might make a fresh start... if it is not too much to ask for?" He looked at her appealingly, so sweet and boyish that any other girl's heart might have melted. Hers did not.

"I would like that," she said, meaning not a single word of it.

He looked relieved. "I am glad of it," he said, picking up her hand and kissing it. _But are you?_ she thought shrewdly. Perhaps he had put on a show, just as she had. "My lady, if you would care to dance?"

"But you don't like to dance," she pointed out. He did not, she knew. _He must consider it fearfully frivolous. As he does tourneys. And singers and flowering gardens, no doubt, and every little joy that is to be found in life._

"No," he said amiably. "But you do."

* * *

She plucked the gold pins from her hair herself, having given her handmaids leave to enjoy the remnants of the feast and the bedding. No doubt they would wish to conduct private ceremonies of their own, she had told him with a laugh, there was nothing to raise a maiden's blood like a wedding, to remind her that her youth and beauty and freedom would not last.

Curls came loose, with each pin that she scattered on the table, until finally her hair fell down in one great wave to her waist. It was dark and glossy, the color of polished oak he thought. She smiled at him over her shoulder, as though she could read his thoughts.

"Is the view to your liking, my lord?" she asked sweetly.

"It is perfect."

"That's a pity," she said, fingers darting over the laces that criss-crossed her bodice. She tugged the gown off, baring her shoulders and the tops of her small, white breasts. "I had only just begun and yet here you are, already sated." It pooled at her feet, pale green silk shot with golden threads, and she turned to him clad only in her fine lawn chemise. "Now how shall I entertain Your Grace? Shall we try a game of _cy_ _vasse_?"

"If you like." He watched as she pulled a chair to the fireplace and began to run acomb through her curling hair. The scent of rosewater filled the air. "Doesn't it ever tire you? To be obliged to flirt so relentlessly?"

"I imagine that I feel as you do when you are in battle. You were trained to it, as I am to... the dance of courtship, one might say. After a time, you cease to think of it at all."

"It becomes a part of you," he agreed. "Does our marriage feel like a battle to you?"

"I've seen worse," she sighed. "You said you would show the token the Bolton bastard sent you. Pray do. I have never had a chance to recant my words before."

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Quite. You will not offend my delicate sensibilities." She smiled. "I have heard tell of Roose Bolton's bastard from the man himself. Nothing he sends his liege will shock me."

He fetched it for her. It was never far from him, for some morbid impulse kept him from throwing it down a latrine pit as it so richly deserved. _Father would have been disgusted and rightfully so._

"Is it skin?" she asked, studying it.

"Theon Greyjoy's, to be precise," he told her. She opened her eyes very wide. "Now you know why the Boltons keep a flayed man as their sigil, Margaery."

She put her hands to her mouth and he slid the raggedy strip back into the pouch with which it had come. "Are they still- no, I do not need to know. He was a traitor and he deserved it." She swallowed hard and he felt the sudden urge to put his arm around her, to shield her. He had never seen her look so young, so vulnerable. "Why do you still have it?"

He shrugged.

"Does it bring you joy?" she prompted. "No, I can see that it does not. Robb, this is-" she seemed to struggle with the words. Gingerly she put her hand on his shoulder, as though fearful that he might snap at her. _Does she fear me now as well?_ "-this is not worthy of you. Put it away and forget about it."

"I wish I could," he said. "It makes me... not happy, I suppose, but-"

"Vindicated," she decided. "Is that the way of it?"

 _I send you a piece of prince._ He had named his little brothers princes too. "Yes."

"It is repulsive," she said. "If you will not throw it away, _I_ will."

"You are welcome to it."

Something in his face must have given her pause for suddenly she threw her arms around his neck and pressed herself to him. She smelled of summer - rosewater and spices. "Robb," she whispered and it was only then that he realized that the tears on his face were not hers, but his. She cradled his head against her shoulder and when he shook, she rocked him gently and mouthed words that he did not understand. She might have sung him a lullaby, she might have whispered to him that a king ought to have courage. It did not matter, save that she was there and he was in her arms.

* * *

"Prince Doran writes to congratulate King Robb on the happy occasion of his ascendancy in King's Landing," the maester said. "He also adds that in Dorne, they do not harm little girls and most regretfully, that he cannot deliver Princess Myrcella to the capital."

"Does he call her princess?" Brynden demanded.

"Yes."

He could feel a headache coming on and he had not even broken his fast yet. "Tell him that we are not all monsters. The girl will be treated with the deference and courtesy that her upbringing entitles her to. A match will someday be brokered to her but surely a Prince of Dorne will look for a better-born bride than a bastard. Which she is."

"Am I to emphasize that point?"

"You are. Not that it will do us any good," he said sourly. "If Doran still calls her princess, the child is long since fled - no doubt he has sent her to join her mother and brothers, wherever they are. Perhaps he expects King Joffrey's happy ascendancy sometime soon." It had been months and Lady Olenna had still not been able to unearth any trace of the vanished Lannisters. "What next?"

"Some lords of the westerlands-"

"And more to come on the morrow, I am sure." The lords of the westerlands were all but tripping over themselves to skitter over to the winning side - the ones that felt themselves wronged by the Lannisters at least. "Have Tarly look in to it, he will know the lie of the land better. And tell me who should be next in line to the Rock - a worthy candidate, if you understand me."

"Your meaning is plain, Ser. I will look into it."

The westerlands must be dealt with, but it would be better if they were taken from within, as seemed hopeful at the moment, than through battle and siege. _Robb and I will have to give it the attention it deserves soon._ The east had thankfully been dealt with, Lysa having finally come to her senses. _She might have been my daughter. We seem to share the same pig-headed stubbornness._

"You may show these letters to the queen, if she asks."

"She always asks, Ser."

"Clearly she has little to occupy her time with." _A baby would have been best,_ he thought but so far Margaery showed no signs of proving with child. _He tumbled Jeyne once and Margaery half-a-hundred times._ It was most unfair, the Blackfish decided. "I shall want to see the letters of appointments after I have broken my fast. Make sure that you keep them ready."

Before he went to the Great Hall however, he made a detour to the courtyard where his wife and her guards had already saddled up. She was wrapped in furs and the red-and-blue cloak of the Tullys, waiting only his leave before she rode for Riverrun. She looked as sickly as ever, a pale, frightened child. He did not blame her for her plight, not as much as he did Robb at any rate. If she roused any emotion in him it was only pity.

"Are you comfortable, my lady?" he asked her gently.

"As well as I will ever be." She forced a brave smile on her face.

"I hope you will recover your strength at Riverrun. Princess Arya dwells there with her mother. She was ever a child of spirit - perhaps she will teach you to laugh again."

"I fear my laughing days are over, Ser," she said wearily.

"You are too young to say that." He squeezed her hand and turned to the captain of the guard. "Travel slowly with her ladyship and see to her every comfort. Her person is precious to us all."

The man bowed and then there was nothing to do but step back and watch his pale young bride ride away from King's Landing and out of his life. _Hopefully forever,_ he thought grimly. He had nothing against Jeyne personally but her very presence in all their lives was an embarrassment. _She will be happier in Riverrun._ In time she might find someone to love there, for he would certainly never maintain a normal married life with her. He had made that quite clear to Robb. _She will never be my wife, save in name, and she will never be your mistress. I will wed her under those conditions and none other._

There had been nothing else to be done - the Tyrells would have erupted in fury if Robb had openly acknowledged his bastard. _I have cleared the path for you, Margaery,_ he thought, feeling somewhat aggrieved at all the hassle. _Now it is time you did your duty._

He found his queen in the Great Hall, in a flowing white gown with summer flowers in her hair. Playacting like some sprite of the meadow, he thought sourly. As though she had nothing better to do than prance around in pretty gowns. She was circled by her devotees, among them, surprisingly his squire.

"Ser Brynden!" she exclaimed when she saw him and beckoned him over. He could very well have done without it. A man liked to have a bit of piece and quiet in his life, every now and then, without having to dance attendance on a mayfly queen.

"Your Grace looks especially lovely this morning," he said. Margaery liked a touch of gallantry and expected him to vary the words every time he met her.

"Thank you." She beamed at him. She looked especially happy this morning, he thought. Fresh and bright and shining. Had she and Robb reconciled? He prayed that it was so. They spoke sweetly to each other in public, but he could see that things were not right between them. _And no, why should they be?_ "Have you seen Lady Jeyne off?" she asked.

"Yes. I hope the climate in Riverrun will agree with her."

"King's Landing is unreasonably warm," she agreed, fanning herself with a hand as though to emphasize her point. "I pray she recovers her strength quickly so that she might join us as soon as possible. I so miss having her attend me. But I will soon have my cousins to console me for sweet Jeyne's loss - Alla, Megga and Elinor are all to join me here. My mother and good-sister Leonette too. I will enjoy their wisdom and experience now."

"Surely your lady grandmother is most meet for that task, Your Grace?"

"Grandmother is very dear to me," Margaery said, with a secret smile, "but it has been years since... oh never mind. It was a piece of women's gossip that would not interest you, Ser."

He supposed that it would not. "My niece, Lady Arryn, will join us soon as well to swear her fealty."

"My, won't the castle be bustling then!" Her eyes sparkled. "If only our good neighbors in Dorne and the westerlands would join the festivities."

"Some in the west might be tempted to soon, we feel. Perhaps Prince Doran as well..."

"I have always wanted to visit Dorne," she said. "My brother Willas speaks sometimes of it, and fondly."

That surprised him. "Does Lord Willas bear no grudge towards the Dornishmen, considering what passed between him and the Viper?"

"Oh no," Margaery said easily. "He and the Viper correspond _endlessly_. They are both great connoisseurs of hunting dogs and horseflesh. Willas has often spoken of how he dreams of visiting Dorne someday, to see the fabled spice markets and horse bazaars. The Water Gardens too are said to be especially lovely, though I do not believe that any gardens in the world can rival those of Highgarden. Perhaps I will take him there someday. Soon." Her eyes sparkled with mischief.

She let him savor a few bites of his breakfast before piping up again. "Perhaps we might suggest that your other niece, Lady Stark, visit us again? Arya will soon need to be wed, to seal our alliance with the Freys. Her mother should be with her."

"Catelyn?" He shook his head. "I fear she is too deep in her grief to care... and she will want to be with my brother Hoster. Who is-"

"-dying," Margaery finished sadly. "I know." She tapped her fingers against the table. "But perhaps we will be able to send her happier news soon."

"Soon? I fear, my lady, that the westerlands will prove more recalcitrant than-"

"Oh I wasn't talking about _them_ ," she said, laughing as though he'd something endearingly amusing. "Oh no, no. No I meant something else. Something else entirely."

 


End file.
